Senior Software Engineer - Anti-Abuse

soundcloud71; Berlin; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

SoundCloud is hiring a Senior Backend Engineer for its Anti-Abuse Team. The role is based in Berlin or London and focuses on building scalable abuse prevention platforms with distributed, event-driven backends.

You will own end-to-end platform solutions, collaborate with Product, Analytics, Trust & Safety, and Engineering, and help scale detection across large datasets and services. Experience in Go and API design is valued.

Qualifications

• Extensive software engineering experience designing and operating distributed, event-driven backends.
• IaC with Terraform and cloud environments (AWS/GCP).
• Experience with microservices, SQL/NoSQL, containers.
• Ownership of craft: CD, testing, security and clean code.
• Strong ownership in fast-moving environments and willingness to learn.

Responsibilities

• Build and evolve platform capabilities for abuse detection at scale.
• Shape architecture and balance long-term scalability with rapid responses.
• Partner with Product, Analytics, Trust & Safety and Engineering teams to address abuse patterns.
• Own problems end-to-end from opportunity to delivery.
• Make pragmatic decisions on cost, latency, complexity, scalability and maintainability.
• Drive architecture discussions and improve engineering practices and tooling.
• Debug complex issues across data pipelines and distributed systems.
• Be on-call to ensure reliability of SoundCloud’s systems.

Skills

API design

SQL for large datasets

gRPC

GraphQL

Go

Scala

Abuse prevention

AI-assisted development

Tools

Terraform

AWS

GCP

Job description

SoundCloud empowers artists and fans to connect and share through music. Founded in 2007, SoundCloud is an artist-first platform empowering artists to build and grow their careers by providing them with the most progressive tools, services, and resources. With over 400+ million tracks from 40 million artists, the future of music is SoundCloud.

SoundCloud is looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join our Anti-Abuse Team, with a mission to keep connections between fans and creators safe and authentic, while building and operating an abuse prevention platform at global scale. The role can be based in either our Berlin or London office.

Our services are at the heart of SoundCloud’s user journeys. We operate a substantial suite of event-based services, combining specialised and generalised detection approaches to tackle complex architectural problems where scale, adaptability and fast decision-making are critical.

You'll join a self-sufficient team passionate about abuse prevention, building scalable and adaptable solutions that stay ahead of emerging risks. The role combines long-term platform and architecture work with rapid response to new abuse vectors, giving you the opportunity to solve both strategic and time-sensitive engineering problems.

You'll have significant end-to-end ownership to identify problems, shape solutions and drive projects from the ground up, working directly with engineering and T&S Professionals. If you're creative, proactive and enjoy being the expert who turns complex problems into effective solutions, you'll have plenty of room to make an impact.

Key Responsibilities

• Build and evolve reusable platform capabilities and services that enable other teams to detect and respond to emerging abuse patterns at scale
• Shape the platform architecture and technical strategy, balancing long-term scalability with rapid responses to emerging challenges
• Partner with Product, Analytics, Trust & Safety professionals, and Engineering teams to identify and address abuse patterns across the organisation, driving alignment on solutions and communicating complex technical concepts clearly to diverse stakeholders.
• Own problems end-to-end, from identifying opportunities and defining solutions to driving projects through delivery
• Make pragmatic technical decisions, balancing cost, latency, complexity, scalability and maintainability
• Drive architecture discussions, contribute to technical strategy, and improve engineering practices, processes and tooling.
• Debug complex issues across data pipelines and distributed systems
• Continuously learn and share knowledge of industry best practices in abuse prevention and detection
• Be part of on-call rotation to ensure the reliability and availability of SoundCloud’s systems

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing APIs and backend services consumed by multiple client platforms
• Strong SQL skills for massive datasets (e.g. BigQuery or similar)
• Knowledge of different API communication patterns (e.g., gRPC, GraphQL)
• Strong professional experience with Go; experience with Scala or another language is a plus
• Nice to have: Experience in abuse prevention, fraud detection or Trust & Safety is a plus
• Nice to have: Experience using AI-assisted development tools and a strong intuition for their strengths, weaknesses, and emerging opportunities

Experience and Background

• Extensive professional software engineering experience, including significant experience designing and operating distributed, event-driven backend systems at scale.
• Hands-on experience with infrastructure as code (IaC) using Terraform and cloud-native environments such as AWS or GCP
• Experience in building distributed data processing and ETL pipelines, metrics and supporting ML infrastructure
• Experience with microservices, SQL and NoSQL databases, container technologies
• You care about the craft of software engineering: continuous delivery, defensive programming, automated testing, security, clean code principles
• You have a strong sense of ownership and are comfortable navigating ambiguity in fast-moving environments
• You bring a humble, collaborative, team-first mindset and an eagerness to learn and support your colleagues
• Bonus point: You love music

About us

• We are a multinational company with offices in the US (New York and Los Angeles), Germany (Berlin), and the UK (London)
• We provide a flexible work culture that offers the opportunity to collaborate and connect in person at our offices as well as accommodating work from home
• We are deeply committed to ensuring diversity, equity and inclusion at all levels of our organization and fostering a community where everyone's voice, perspective and experience is respected and heard
• We believe a strong team is made by investing in employees through mentorship, workshops and enrichment opportunities

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at SoundCloud

SoundCloud is for everyone. Diversity and open expression are fundamental to our organization; they help us lead what’s next in music by understanding and empowering our creators and fans, no matter their identity. We acknowledge the challenges in the music industry, and strive to influence an inclusive culture where everyone can contribute respectfully and thrive, especially the historically marginalized communities that many of our creators, fans and SoundClouders identify with. We are dedicated to creating an inclusive environment at SoundCloud for everyone, regardless of gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, migration background, national origin, age, disability status, or care-giver status.