The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk is a global technology company and the world’s leading independent platform for digital advertising, with over 3,000 employees across more than 30 offices. Our technology helps advertisers reach the right audiences across the open internet — from streaming TV and podcasts to mobile apps, news, and more.
Advertising powers the content people love. By making it more transparent, effective, and responsible, we help support trusted journalism, quality entertainment, and creators worldwide. The world’s brands and agencies rely on us to reach their customers and grow their businesses responsibly.
The scale of our platform brings unique technical challenges — from processing massive datasets in real time to building systems that operate reliably on a global scale. When you work here, your impact is worldwide. We welcome diverse perspectives, encourage curiosity, and build teams that learn from one another. If you’re driven to solve meaningful challenges, we’d love to meet you.
The Team
The Custom Solutions team designs and delivers tailored solutions for The Trade Desk's most strategic accounts: custom capabilities with high commercial demand that extend beyond the core platform. Working closely with Solutions Consulting, Solutions Engineering, and commercial teams, we identify where custom development can create the most client value and take those solutions from zero to one, spanning tailored front-end experiences, custom algorithms, measurement solutions, and AI-powered workflows. In doing so, we extend The Trade Desk platform to deliver incremental value that drives revenue growth and deepens client partnerships.
The Role
As a Staff Product Manager on the Custom Solutions team, you will own strategic initiatives end-to-end: working directly with our most important clients to understand their needs, shaping the right solution, evaluating what's worth building, delivering it with engineering and design, and driving the go-to-market strategy behind it. This is a client-facing role: you'll work closely with clients and account teams throughout, and you'll own each solution from first conversation to commercial impact. It's a rare opportunity for a builder: true 0-to-1 product work inside the world's leading independent demand-side platform, direct client exposure, modern AI-first ways of working, and results you can measure in client outcomes and revenue.
What you will be doing:
• Own initiatives end-to-end. Take strategic initiatives from client need through ideation, evaluation, build, client release, and go-to-market. This is the complete product lifecycle, without an established playbook.
• Work directly with clients. Partner with strategic clients and account teams as a trusted product advisor, deeply understanding their needs and expectations and delivering solutions that drive
revenue growth and deepen partnerships.
• Evaluate before you build. Pressure-test ideas against commercial demand, feasibility, and data availability. Make prioritization calls that balance client impact, revenue, and engineering cost, with a clear rationale behind each one. Prototype to align. Build prototypes to validate concepts with clients and align engineering before committing development resources.
• Use AI to move faster. Apply AI Tools (e.g. Claude) daily across research, requirements, analysis, and delivery, raising the pace and quality bar of your PM work.
• Build with data. We build custom algorithms often. Partner with engineering and data science to shape them, and judge whether a model is actually delivering for the client.
• Craft front-end experiences. Work with design and engineering to define intuitive, high-quality user experiences, sweating the details of what clients see and touch.
• Drive the go-to-market. Define positioning and packaging, lead launch plans, enable Solutions Consulting and commercial teams to sell what you build, and measure adoption and impact after
release.
What you bring to the table:
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience
• 7-10 years of product management experience, ideally in advertising technology or an adjacent platform business, with a proven track record of launching complex products
• Proven 0-to-1 experience: you've taken products or major features from concept to launch, navigating ambiguity and validating demand along the way
• Client-facing experience: building consultative relationships and communicating credibly with senior and C-level client stakeholders
• Strong data fluency: comfortable with data analysis and ML/algorithmic concepts, and able to evaluate whether a model is delivering results
• Hands-on AI experience: you’ve built AI-powered solutions or features
• Experience shipping front-end, user-facing experiences with strong UX instincts
• Strong understanding of the programmatic advertising landscape: the players, the economics, and the latest industry trends
• Experience crafting Product Requirements Documentation and driving cross-functional execution in a matrixed environment
• Desire to make a cultural impact and grow as an internal leader
The Trade Desk does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firm recruiters. Fees will not be paid in the event a candidate submitted by a recruiter without an agreement in place is hired; such resumes will be deemed the sole property of The Trade Desk. The Trade Desk is an equal opportunity employer. All aspects of employment will be based on merit, competence, performance, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, marital status, age, national origin, ancestry, physical or mental disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic information, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran status, or any other status protected under federal, state, or local law.
[LA JOBS ONLY] The Trade Desk will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories for employment in a manner consistent with the requirements of the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring, Ordinance No. 184652.
[SF JOBS ONLY] Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.
In accordance with various US state laws, the range provided is the Trade Desk's reasonable estimate of the base compensation for this role. The actual amount may differ based on non-discriminatory factors such as experience, knowledge, skills, and location. All employees may be eligible to become The Trade Desk shareholders through eligibility for stock-based compensation grants, which are awarded to employees based on company and individual performance. The Trade Desk also offers other compensation depending on the role such as variable compensation-based incentives and commissions. Plus, expected benefits for this role include comprehensive healthcare (medical, dental, and vision) with premiums paid in full for employees and dependents, retirement benefits such as a 401k plan and company match, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance, well-being benefits, reimbursement for certain tuition expenses, parental leave, sick time of 1 hour per 30 hours worked, vacation time for full-time employees up to 120 hours thru the first year and 160 hours thereafter, and around 13 paid holidays per year. Employees can also purchase The Trade Desk stock at a discount through The Trade Desk’s Employee Stock Purchase Plan.
The Trade Desk also offers a competitive benefits package. Click here to learn more.
Note: Interns are not eligible for variable incentive awards such as stock-based compensation, retirement plan, vacation, tuition reimbursement or parental leave
As an Equal Opportunity Employer, The Trade Desk is committed to creating an inclusive hiring experience where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
Please reach out to us at accommodations@thetradedesk.com to request an accommodation or discuss any accessibility needs you may require to access our Company Website or navigate any part of the hiring process.
When you contact us, please include your preferred contact details and specify the nature of your accommodation request or questions. Any information you share will be handled confidentially and will not impact our hiring decisions.
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