Staff Backend Engineer

Summary

Join Reddit's Media Foundation team as a lead backend engineer and shape the media experience for one of the internet's largest platforms. You will architect and evolve Reddit's media infrastructure, building scalable, high-performance solutions. This role involves cross-functional collaboration, leading a team of engineers, and contributing to the full development lifecycle. The ideal candidate possesses deep expertise in image and video processing, backend systems, and performance optimization. You will drive technical and product strategy, setting new industry benchmarks. This is a high-impact role offering significant influence and professional growth opportunities.

Requirements

• BS degree in Computer Science, a similar technical field of study or equivalent practical experience
• 5+ years of experience as a software engineer in large-scale distributed systems
• 8+ years of hands-on, professional software development experience in one or more general purpose programming languages (Go, Python, Java, C++)
• Experienced with GraphQL, REST, HTTP, gRPC, Thrift basics, and the ability to design and implement maintainable APIs
• Experienced with distributed caching layers, and distributed large scale data storage systems like Redis
• Familiarity with image processing and delivery technologies such as image scaling, cropping, and image formats like progressive JPEG, WebP, etc
• Familiarity with HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), MPEG-DASH, MP4, and other streaming protocols, as well as video compression standards (H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP9, AV1)
• Working knowledge of CDN technologies (Fastly, Cloudfare, Cloudfront) to optimize video delivery. Experienced with domain specific language like VCL
• Strong organizational skills, the ability to prioritize tasks and to deliver projects on schedule
• Entrepreneurial spirit. You are self-directed, innovative, and biased towards action in fast-paced environments. You love to build new things and thrive in ambiguity and even failure
• Excellent communication skills. You collaborate effectively with teams in a fully remote environment and discuss complex topics with technical and non-technical audiences

Responsibilities

• Work cross-functionally with product, design, and other engineering counterparts to execute on product and business strategy and build novel products and features that our users will love
• Architect and evolve Reddit media infrastructure to deliver scalable, high-performance solutions that set new benchmarks for the industry
• Contribute to the full development cycle: technical design, development, test, experimentation, analysis, and launch. You’ll be reviewing code and design docs, giving feedback on product specs and mocks
• Lead a team of thoughtful, fast-moving, and motivated engineers. Set and define standards that improve developer workflows, recommend best practices, and help coach and mentor engineers on the team to further their professional development
• Continuously learn and improve your technical and non-technical abilities

Preferred Qualifications

• Demonstrated curiosity and commitment to staying up-to-date with advancements in video compression technologies, including attending conferences, reading research papers, and engaging with the latest industry trends
• Strong understanding of how to measure and improve video visual quality metrics (eg., VMAF, PSNR)
• Hands-on expertise with tools like FFMPEG, GPAC and similar media frameworks for processing, modifying, and manipulating media streams
• Experienced with client-side technologies, familiarly with the client library around media (eg., AVFoundation, VideoToolbox, video prefetching)
• Familiar with background data fetching
• Strong data analysis skills using SQL

Benefits

• Comprehensive Healthcare Benefits and Income Replacement Programs
• 401k Match
• Family Planning Support
• Gender-Affirming Care
• Mental Health & Coaching Benefits
• Flexible Vacation & Reddit Global Days off
• Generous paid Parental Leave
• Paid Volunteer time off
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) program with employer match
• Generous time off for vacation
• Parental leave