Join Reddit as a Staff Software Engineer to protect the platform from DDoS attacks and automated abuse at internet scale.
Posted by employer 1 week ago
First seen on Joblaze 1 week ago
Last verified on the company career page 17 hours ago
Skills & Technologies
Role intensity
40% coding
AI in the day-to-day
Contribute to the team’s ML-at-Ingress initiatives, including experimenting with models for traffic classification, bot detection, and anomaly detection.
Requirements
- Experience
- 7+ years
Not disclosed in this posting: visa sponsorship.
Benefits
Joblaze summary
In the role of Staff Software Engineer for Site Defense at Reddit, the individual will focus on designing and maintaining systems that protect the platform from various network threats, including DDoS attacks and automated abuse. Proficiency in distributed systems and programming languages such as Python, Go, or Java is essential, along with experience in security measures like DDoS mitigation and bot management. This position is ideal for seasoned engineers with a strong background in networking and security, who are also capable of mentoring junior team members. The role offers a significant opportunity to impact Reddit's infrastructure at a large scale.
Joblaze insights
- Listed 8 days ago on Joblaze — tracked directly from Reddit's career page.
- Reddit has 168 other open roles including Director, Revenue Strategy & Operations (Large Customer Sales), Backend Engineer, IAM, Director, Revenue Strategy & Operations (Large Customer Sales).
- 6536 active Python roles on Joblaze right now.
- 1978 active Go roles on Joblaze right now.
- 1660 active C++ roles on Joblaze right now.
- Salary band is above the typical range for Security roles (median ~$168,000).
- Pays more than 86% of the 3233 salaried Python roles we track (median $160,000). See Python salary trends
Quick facts
- Is the Staff Software Engineer - Site Defense role remote?
- Yes — Reddit lists this as a fully remote position.
- What's the salary range?
- Reddit lists $217,000–$303,900 for this role.
- How much experience is required?
- At least 7 years of relevant experience for this Staff Software Engineer - Site Defense role.
- What's the tech stack?
- Joblaze extracted these technologies from the posting: Abuse Prevention, Bot Management, C++, CDN, DDoS, Go.
- 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 - Site Defense role at Reddit.
From the original posting
Reddit's Transport and Site Defense teams build and operate foundational infrastructure behind one of the largest sites in the world. These teams own how requests enter Reddit, how services discover and talk to each other, how traffic moves across clusters and clouds, and how Reddit protects itself from DDoS attacks, scrapers, bots, and other undesired traffic.
We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join the Site Defense team within Reddit’s Infrastructure organization. Site Defense is responsible for protecting Reddit at internet scale—serving as the first line of defense against DDoS attacks, automated abuse, large-scale scraping, and other network-level threats. This is a high impact role that sits at the intersection of distributed systems, networking, security, and applied machine learning. You will design and own the critical infrastructure that safeguards Reddit’s data from large scale attacks.
You will:
- Design, build, and operate high-scale, low-latency systems that protect Reddit from DDoS attacks, bots, and automated abuse.
- Analyze, develop and evolve ingress-level defenses across CDN, edge, and internal infrastructure layers.
- Build systems to detect, score, and mitigate malicious traffic in real time at per-request and per-user granularity
- Partner closely within Infrastructure and with Security, and internal Safety teams to balance security, performance, and user experience
- Mentor junior engineers in their professional growth.
- Contribute to the team’s ML-at-Ingress initiatives, including experimenting with models for traffic classification, bot detection, and anomaly detection
- Own services end-to-end, including design, implementation, on-call, and operational excellence
- Participate in incident response and post-incident analysis for large-scale network or abuse events
You have:
- 7+ years of experience building and operating high throughput and low latency production distributed systems.
- Software development experience in one or more general purpose programming languages; Python, Go, Rust, Java, C++.
- Excellent communication skills to collaborate with a service-oriented team and company.
- Experience building and maintaining distributed, fault-tolerant distributed systems at scale
- Experience with networking fundamentals (HTTP, TLS, TCP/IP, proxies, CDNs, load balancing).
Nice to have:
- Experience with DDoS mitigation, WAFs, bot management, or abuse prevention systems.
- Experience with anti-abuse frameworks and bot scores (ReCaptcha, Datadome, Turnstile)
- Experience with browser fingerprinting frameworks (fingerprintJS, ThumbmarkJS)
- Familiarity with ML systems in production, especially real-time inference or feature pipelines.
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
#LI-Remote
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.
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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.