At Index Exchange, we’re reinventing how digital advertising works—at scale. As a global advertising supply-side platform, we empower the world’s leading media owners and marketers to thrive in a programmatic, privacy-first ecosystem.
We’re a proud industry pioneer with over 20 years of experience accelerating the ad technology evolution. Our proprietary tech is trusted by some of the world’s largest brands and media owners and plays a crucial role in keeping the internet open, accessible, and largely free.
We process more than 550 billion real-time auctions every day (in comparison, Google processes 8.5 billion searches per day) with ultra-low latency. Our platform is vertically integrated from servers to networks and runs primarily on our own metal and cloud infrastructure. This end-to-end infrastructure is designed to provide both stability and agility, enabling us to adapt quickly as the market evolves.
At the core of it all is our engineering-first culture. Our engineers tackle internet-scale problems across tight-knit, global teams. From moving petabytes of data and optimizing with AI to making real-time infrastructure decisions, Indexers have the agency and influence to shape the future of advertising. We move fast, build thoughtfully, and stay grounded in our core values.
About the role:
We are looking for a Staff Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) to serve as a technical leader and quality champion across Index. This is a hands-on individual contributor role with broad cross-team and cross-divisional influence where you will define and drive modern quality engineering practices, build scalable automation, tools, test infrastructure, and enable teams to deliver high-quality, high-performance software with confidence.
You will operate at the intersection of architecture, quality, developer experience, and operations, ensuring quality is built into every stage of the software lifecycle. You will also leverage AI to improve testing efficiency and insights.
As a SDET champion on the engineering team, you will own the vision for test infrastructures, build frameworks that allow developers to easily write reliable tests, and invent new mechanisms for ensuring that every change we make can be deployed safely and quickly. You will help solve our most difficult challenges and will coach other engineers to foster a culture of relentless high standards.
This position reports directly to Senior Engineering Manager based in Bangalore and will work closely with members of the Quality and Delivery teams.
What we’re looking for:
- 10+ years of experience in Software Quality Engineering/SDET role with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related field.
- Strong software engineering skills, including proficiency in programming languages such as Golang, Java or C#.
- Proven experience building scalable, reusable, enterprise grade test frameworks, tools and infrastructure for large-scale distributed systems.
- Hands-on experience with CI/CD (GitLab preferred), Containerization (Docker), and orchestration (Kubernetes).
- Experience with microservices architectures, APIs, and data-intensive systems, validating large datasets and pipelines.
- Deep expertise in test strategies, methodologies, and automation at scale.
- Have systems thinking and end-to-end accountability, proactively identifying risks and influencing cross-team quality without direct authority.
- Exceptional analytical skills and structured problem-solving to drive clarity and outcomes in ambiguous environments.
- A technical role model, guiding engineers and consistently raising the bar through design, reviews, and best practices.
- Proven ability to lead cross-team initiatives, align stakeholders, and drive engineering excellence at scale
- Demonstrates a learn-and-be-curious mindset, with a strong bias for ownership, innovation, and continuous improvement
Here’s what you’ll be doing:
Technical Leadership & Quality Strategy
- Working on cutting edge programmatic ad tech that touches millions of users every single day.
- Collaborate with the Manager to define and evolve the quality engineering vision and strategy for Index’s high-scale distributed systems.
- Drive shift-left testing and quality-by-design principles, influencing system architecture for testability and reliability.
- Establish best practices across functional, integration, end-to-end, performance, and resilience testing.
- Assess current practices, tooling, and workflows to identify gaps and translate them into actionable plans that balance impact, feasibility, and organizational readiness.
- Bring clarity to complexity, probing assumptions, identifying quality risks, evaluating trade-offs, and optimization opportunities.
Test Frameworks, Tooling & Infrastructure
- Design and build scalable, reusable automation frameworks and test infrastructure.
- Develop tools that enable teams to independently own, measure, and continuously improve quality.
- Enhance and optimize CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitLab) to ensure fast, safe, and reliable releases.
- Enable data validation, observability-driven testing, and production validation strategies.
Cross-Team Influence & Developer Enablement
- Partner with Engineering, Product, Platform, and DevOps teams to ensure high-quality releases by enforcing quality standards and best practices.
- Influence design and architecture decisions to improve scalability, performance, and testability.
- Identify systemic gaps and drive across engineering improvements in testing practices and tooling.
- Standardize quality metrics, reporting, and release quality gates across teams
- Drive improvements in production quality, incident reduction, and system resilience
Mentorship, Coaching & Hiring
- Mentor and coach engineers on test design, automation, tooling and quality best practices.
- Raise engineering standards through code reviews, design reviews, and technical guidance.
- Actively participate in hiring and bar-raising activities.
- Foster a culture of ownership, learning, and high engineering standards.
Why you’ll love working here:
- Comprehensive health plans for you and your dependents .
- Paid time off, health days, and personal obligation days plus flexible work schedules
- Competitive retirement matching plans
- Equity packages
- Company contribution to Provident Fund
- Monthly internet stipend
- Generous parental leave available to birthing, non-birthing, and adoptive parents
- Annual well-being allowance plus fitness discounts and group wellness activities
- Employee assistance program
- Mental health first aid program that provides an in-the-moment point of contact and reassurance
- One day of volunteer time off per year and a donation-matching program
- Monthly town halls and regular community-led team events
- Multiple resources and programming to support continuous learning
- A workplace that supports a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment –
Equal employment opportunity
At Index Exchange, we believe that successful products are built by teams just as diverse as the audience who uses them. As such, we are committed to equal employment opportunities. We celebrate diversity of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or expression, or veteran status. Additionally, we realize that diversity is deeper than any status or classification—diversity is the human experience. For those who show grit, passion, and humility—Index will welcome you.
Accessibility for applicants with disabilities
Index Exchange welcomes and encourages individuals with disabilities to apply to work with us.
If you require an accommodation, please share the details of your request and any information how we can assist you with the hiring recruiter when they contact you. Index Exchange will make reasonable efforts to ensure accommodation requests are met throughout the recruitment process.
Index everywhere, Index anywhere
Our corporate headquarters are in Toronto, with major offices in New York, Montreal, Kitchener, London, San Francisco, and many other global cities. As a major global advertising exchange, we are committed to operating as a tightly knit global team and embracing and empowering talent wherever our colleagues may be.
AI Disclaimer: Automated tools including artificial intelligence may be used to assist in screening and assessing applicants for this role. All hiring decisions involve human review.
Vacancy Status: This posting is for an existing vacancy.
