Staff Software Engineer, Media Experiences

Remote from: USA
Salary, yearly, USD: 217,000 - 303,000
Department: Software Engineering
Employment type: Full Time,
Job posted: 26 Jun 2026
Apply before: 26 Jul 2026
Experience level: Senior
Views / Applies: 51 / 11

About company

About Reddit

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Internet
2005

Actively Hiring

AI Summary

This role is for a Staff Software Engineer focusing on media experiences at Reddit, a leading social platform. You will architect and lead the technical direction of media infrastructure including video/audio ingestion, processing, and delivery at global scale. The position requires deep expertise in distributed systems, mentoring engineering teams, and driving AI integration into media workflows. Reddit offers a competitive compensation package with a base salary range of $217,000–$303,000 USD. This is a high-impact role that shapes how millions of users experience media daily.

Role DNA

Job Complexity

Easy Hard

Pace & Pressure

Relaxed Fast-paced

Autonomy Level

Guided Full Ownership

Communication Load

Independent Highly Collaborative

AI Insight This role demands 8+ years of experience, technical leadership, and solving complex distributed systems challenges, placing it at a high difficulty level. The need to influence without direct authority adds to the difficulty.

Salary Analysis

AI Insight The offered salary range of $217,000–$303,000 USD is highly competitive for a Staff Software Engineer, exceeding typical market medians. This reflects Reddit's need for top-tier talent and aligns with compensation for senior roles at leading tech companies.

Key Skills

Distributed Systems Media Infrastructure Video/Audio Processing Microservices Event-Driven Architecture AI/ML Integration CDN Optimization Technical Leadership Mentoring System Design

Cover Letter Sample

I am excited to apply for the Staff Software Engineer, Media Experiences role at Reddit. With over 8 years of experience designing large-scale distributed systems, I have led initiatives that optimized media pipelines and improved reliability for millions of users.

My expertise in video/audio processing, CDN routing, and AI integration directly aligns with the technical challenges you are addressing. I have a strong track record of mentoring teams and driving cross-functional alignment on complex projects.

I am passionate about building high-quality media experiences and would thrive in Reddit's collaborative and fast-paced environment. I look forward to contributing to your mission of delivering authentic conversations globally.

Possible Interview Questions

Describe your experience architecting a large-scale media processing pipeline. What were the key challenges and how did you address them?

In my previous role, I led the redesign of a video ingestion and transcoding pipeline handling petabytes of data daily. Key challenges included latency optimization and cost management for CDN egress. I implemented a tiered architecture with adaptive bitrate streaming and a distributed queue system, reducing latency by 40% while maintaining high availability.

How would you approach integrating AI/ML into media delivery to improve user experience?

I would start by collaborating with ML teams to understand models for content recommendation and moderation. For media, we could use predictive caching based on user behaviour and incorporate real-time inference for personalized thumbnail selection. The infrastructure must support low-latency model serving and feature storage, which I would design as a sidecar service.

You need to lead a cross-functional project with no direct authority over team members. How do you ensure alignment and execution?

I focus on building relationships and understanding each team's priorities. I create clear technical documentation and a shared roadmap with milestones. Regular syncs and transparent communication about trade-offs help maintain alignment. I also empower team members by delegating ownership of components and celebrating wins collectively.

We have a new media feature request that requires significant changes to our CDN strategy. Walk me through your decision-making process.

First, I would gather requirements from product and evaluate impacts on latency, cost, and reliability. I'd analyze current CDN performance and explore alternatives like multi-CDN or edge computing. I'd prototype a proof-of-concept, measure against set SLAs, and present a trade-off analysis. The final decision would balance technical feasibility with business impact.

How do you stay current with emerging technologies in media infrastructure and distributed systems?

I follow industry blogs, attend conferences like ACM Multimedia and USENIX ATC, and participate in open-source projects. I also run small experiments with new tools—such as evaluating new streaming protocols—to understand their practical implications. For AI, I take online courses and collaborate with ML colleagues to stay abreast of developments.

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 126 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 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.

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 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.

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