Staff Software Engineer, Media Experience

Reddit is a community of communities. It’s built on shared interests, passion, and trust, and is home to the most open and authentic conversations on the internet. Every day, Reddit users submit, vote, and comment on the topics they care most about. With 100,000+ active communities and approximately 130 million daily active unique visitors, Reddit is one of the internet’s largest sources of information. For more information, visit www.redditinc.com. We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to help us build the next version of our media infrastructure. In this role, you will define the work on the technical components of how we ingest, process, store, and deliver video and audio content at Reddit. You will tackle complex technical challenges to support our media product strategy and deliver high-quality media experiences globally. Key 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. • 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. • Participate with a team of thoughtful, fast-moving, and motivated engineers. Contribute to standards that improve developer workflows, recommend best practices, and help mentor junior engineers on the team to grow their technical expertise. • Move fast while balancing quality. We can’t afford extensive processes, and we also can’t afford show-stopping bugs. We need someone who can balance speed with quality while quickly building brand-new products. • Collaborate with client engineers and platform engineers to improve performance of media across Reddit to serve better content globally. Qualifications • BS degree in Computer Science, a similar technical field of study or equivalent practical experience • 5+ years of industry experience in large-scale distributed systems. • 7+ years of hands-on, professional software development experience in one or more general purpose programming languages (Go, Python, Ruby, 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) • Strong organizational skills, the ability to prioritize tasks and to deliver projects on schedule. • Excellent communication skills. You collaborate effectively with teams in a fully remote environment and discuss complex topics with technical and non-technical audiences. What Will Set You Apart • 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 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. The base salary range for this position is: $217,000—$303,000 USD 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 p