Staff Software Engineer, Media Experiences

About Reddit: Reddit is a global community of communities built on shared interests, deep passions, and unmatched trust, serving as the home to the most open, raw, and authentic conversations on the internet. Orchestrating over 100,000+ active communities and welcoming approximately 126 million daily active unique visitors, Reddit represents one of the internet’s largest structured sources of information and human content. Operating on a massive global scale, Reddit continuously scales its technical infrastructure to seamlessly deliver real-time communication, text networks, and rich multimedia experiences across the digital world.

Position Overview

We are seeking a highly autonomous, systems-fluent, and architecture-focused Staff Software Engineer, Media Experiences to claim absolute technical ownership over our core global media infrastructure under a permanent, full-time remote configuration open across the United States. In this high-leverage technical leadership seat, you will define the macro engineering strategy for how Reddit ingests, transcodes, stores, and delivers real-time video and audio content globally. Shifting completely away from routine non-regulated administrative data entry, generic promotional copywriting loops, or basic single-page front-end styling adjustments, you will run an active high-throughput streaming, distributed event-driven microservices, and CDN routing laboratory. Partnering cross-functionally across embedded Machine Learning, Content Moderation, and Product Management cells, you will architect solutions that ensure ultra-low latency and maximum availability for millions of concurrent users. This position requires a software engineering authority with 8+ years of professional history who guides distributed systems fluidly natively using Backend and systems primitives, designs high-load media pipelines, establishes strict SLO/SLA metrics, and evangelizes AI-assisted development tools to accelerate prototyping cycles while applying rigorous judgment to validate codebases.

Key Responsibilities

• Hyperscale Media Architecture Governance: Architect, scale, and optimize Reddit’s global video and audio processing networks to ensure fault-tolerant, high-availability media delivery natively utilizing Backend design patterns.
• Pipeline Processing Optimization: Build and fine-tune resilient infrastructure systems for asset ingestion, distributed cloud transcoding, and intelligent multi-CDN routing.
• AI & Machine Learning Integration: Partner face-to-face with internal ML teams to integrate media recommendation algorithms, automated content moderation systems, and generative AI inference engines directly into the media layer.
• Operational Standard Engineering: Set the benchmark for technical craftsmanship by defining strict system SLOs/SLAs, authoring system specs, and engineering the next-generation foundational media daemons.
• Cross-Functional Technical Leadership: Influence and align distributed engineering teams across major cross-functional initiatives without direct reporting authority, driving clarity around core technical tradeoffs.
• AI Stack Acceleration: Thoughtfully deploy next-generation AI-assisted coding frameworks and agentic tools to accelerate architecture discovery, scaffolding, and testing while maintaining strict personal ownership of final code blocks.
• Oncall Infrastructure Triage: Establish and enhance team reliability practices—including advanced telemetry alerts, performance dashboards, and incident response runbooks to mitigate production glitches rapidly.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• A minimum of 8+ years of proven, successful professional history operating inside a Staff Software Engineer, Technical Lead, Distributed Systems Architect, or closely matching technical backend infrastructure capacity.
• Expert Large-Scale Systems Command: Extensive production history designing, scaling, and operating high-throughput distributed systems, asynchronous event-driven microservices, and global caching layers.
• Profound structural grasp of backend computing paradigms, multi-threading architectures, network transport protocols, and data persistence models.
• Outstanding written, verbal, and visual presentation communication strengths in English, with an established capability to translate multi-layered product demands into highly organized technical blueprints for executive review.
• Highly autonomous technical leader driven by structural simplicity, speed, quality, and a proactive attitude toward isolating platform bottlenecks.
• Location Context: Position operates under remote guidelines open exclusively to qualified technical system architects residing permanently within the United States.

Preferred Strategic Indicators (Nice to Have)

• Prior technical or architectural background engineering video/audio streaming streaming technologies, container nodes, or live media protocols (such as HLS, DASH, FFmpeg profiles, or custom WebRTC meshes).
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructures and automated orchestration tools, showing background with AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, and automated CI/CD pipelines.
• Practical exposure building media analytics trackers, data indexing systems, or working next to high-scale recommendation engines.

What We Offer

• Top-Tier US Staff Engineering Compensation Matrix: A highly competitive annual base salary structure of $217,000 - $303,000 USD, supplemented by restricted stock units (RSUs) and comprehensive financial reward packages.
• 100% remote workspace infrastructure autonomy anywhere within the United States, allowing maximum geographical flexibility from your dedicated home office.
• Direct High-Scale Operating Credentials: Elite professional milestones achieved by defining the core streaming and media pipelines relied upon by 126+ million daily unique visitors.
• Comprehensive health care preservation benefits protecting employees, providing premium medical, dental, and vision insurance alongside gender-affirming care channels.
• Access to corporate 401(k) plans with matching layers, family planning assistance, caregiving resources, generous paid parental leave, and flexible vacation parameters combined with paid volunteer time off.