Lead the technical architecture of Reddit's media infrastructure, optimizing video and audio content delivery for millions of users.
Skills & Technologies
Role intensity
40% coding
AI in the day-to-day
Thoughtfully utilize AI-assisted development tools to accelerate prototyping, system design, and coding.
Requirements
- Experience
- 8+ years
Benefits
Joblaze summary
In the role of Staff Software Engineer at Reddit, the individual will lead the design and evolution of the company's media infrastructure, focusing on the ingestion, processing, and delivery of audio and video content. Key skills include expertise in distributed systems and microservices, along with a strong ability to communicate technical strategies effectively. This position is ideal for seasoned engineers with a background in technical leadership and a passion for optimizing media experiences. The role also emphasizes collaboration with AI teams to enhance media recommendations and content moderation.
Joblaze insights
- Listed today on Joblaze — tracked directly from Reddit's career page.
- Reddit has 190 other open roles including Client Account Executive, Mid-Market (Goods), Agency Development Lead, DACH, Curriculum Lead, GTM Enablement.
- 1709 active AI/ML roles on Joblaze right now.
- 254 active distributed systems roles on Joblaze right now.
- 63 active Microservices roles on Joblaze right now.
- Salary band is above the typical range for Backend roles (median ~$166,000).
Quick facts
- What's the salary range?
- Reddit lists $217,000–$303,000 for this role.
- How much experience is required?
- At least 8 years of relevant experience for this Staff Software Engineer, Media Experiences role.
- What's the tech stack?
- Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: Microservices, AI/ML, distributed systems.
- What seniority level is this role?
- Reddit targets staff-level candidates for this position.
- Is this full-time or contract?
- Full-time for this Staff Software Engineer, Media Experiences role at Reddit.
From the original posting
We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to lead the technical architecture of our media infrastructure. In this role, you will define the strategy for how we ingest, process, store, and deliver video and audio content at Reddit. You will tackle complex technical challenges while also helping shape our media product strategy to deliver high-quality media experiences globally.
Key Responsibilities
- Architect for Scale: Lead the design and evolution of our global media processing and delivery infrastructure, ensuring low-latency, high-availability media for millions of users.
- Optimize Media Pipelines: Build and optimize resilient backend services for video/audio ingestion, distributed transcoding, and CDN routing.
- Drive AI Integration: Partner with ML/AI teams to build a roadmap that supports media recommendation, intelligent content moderation, and GenAI inference.
- Set the Standard: Establish engineering best practices, design the next generation of our media services, define strict SLOs/SLAs for our media operations.
- Mentorship & Leadership: Guide and empower multiple engineering teams. Translate complex product requirements into actionable technical roadmaps and drive alignment across the company.
- Leverage Modern Tooling: Thoughtfully utilize AI-assisted development tools to accelerate prototyping, system design, and coding, while applying rigorous judgment to validate and own the final outputs. Evangelize AI as a tool.
Qualifications
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a proven track record as a Technical Lead or Staff Engineer.
- Distributed Systems Expertise: Proven track record of designing and operating large-scale distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and microservices.
- Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills. Ability to influence technical direction and navigate tradeoffs between performance, reliability, and business impact without directly managing the engineers involved.
- Demonstrated ability to lead large, cross-functional engineering initiatives that balance technical excellence.
Benefits:
- Comprehensive Healthcare Benefits and Income Replacement Programs
- 401k with Employer Match
- Global Benefit programs that fit your lifestyle, from workspace to professional development to caregiving support
- Family Planning Support
- Gender-Affirming Care
- Mental Health & Coaching Benefits
- Flexible Vacation & Paid Volunteer Time Off
- Generous Paid Parental Leave
Pay Transparency:
This job posting may span more than one career level.
In addition to base salary, this job is eligible to receive equity in the form of restricted stock units, and depending on the position offered, it may also be eligible to receive a commission. Additionally, Reddit offers a wide range of benefits to U.S.-based employees, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k) program with employer match, generous time off for vacation, and parental leave. To learn more, please visit https://www.redditinc.com/careers/.
To provide greater transparency to candidates, we share base salary ranges for all US-based job postings regardless of state. We set standard base pay ranges for all roles based on function, level, and country location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including, skills, depth of work experience and relevant licenses/credentials, and may vary from the amounts listed below.
In select roles and locations, the interviews will be recorded, transcribed and summarized by artificial intelligence (AI). You will have the opportunity to opt out of recording, transcription and summarization prior to any scheduled interviews.
During the interview, we will collect the following categories of personal information: Identifiers, Professional and Employment-Related Information, Sensory Information (audio/video recording), and any other categories of personal information you choose to share with us. We will use this information to evaluate your application for employment or an independent contractor role, as applicable. We will not sell your personal information or disclose it to any third party for their marketing purposes. We will delete any recording of your interview promptly after making a hiring decision. For more information about how we will handle your personal information, including our retention of it, please refer to our Candidate Privacy Policy for Potential Employees and Contractors.
Reddit is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and is committed to building a workforce representative of the diverse communities we serve. Reddit is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If, due to a disability, you need an accommodation during the interview process, please let your recruiter know.