Staff Engineer, Content Platform

Spotify Los Angeles; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Learning opportunities

Share incentives

Parental leave

Employee assistance program

Flexible holidays

Job summary

Spotify is seeking a Staff Engineer to provide architectural leadership across the media platform. You will shape the technical direction from ingestion through transcoding, packaging, storage, delivery, and playback.

This role requires deep expertise in large-scale media systems and the ability to drive strategy across multiple teams. You will mentor engineers, author RFCs and design docs, and partner with managers and senior engineers to balance performance with cost efficiency.

Qualifications

• Experience leading architecture across multiple engineering teams and influencing technical direction.
• Experience designing and operating distributed systems at internet scale.
• Strong understanding of media ingestion, transcoding, packaging, delivery, and playback.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the long-term architectural direction for Spotify's media pipeline across Content Platform.
• Lead large-scale technical initiatives spanning multiple squads and organizations, including media delivery and codec rollouts.
• Partner with engineering managers, product managers, and senior engineers to align technical strategy with product priorities, reliability goals, and cost efficiency.
• Guide architectural decisions across media ingestion, transcoding, packaging, storage, delivery, and playback.
• Author and review RFCs, architecture decision records, and technical design documents for engineering teams and leadership.
• Mentor senior engineers to raise technical quality and architectural thinking.

Skills

Architecture leadership

Distributed systems

Media processing/delivery

Cloud infrastructure

RFCs & design docs

Mentoring engineers

Cross-team collaboration

Tools

Cloud infrastructure tools

Content delivery networks

Job description

Content Platform is responsible for ingesting, processing, storing, and delivering every piece of content on Spotify — from music and podcasts to audiobooks. Within Content Platform, the Media domain owns the end-to-end media pipeline, from the moment content arrives through to seamless playback for listeners around the world. We're looking for a Staff Engineer to provide architectural leadership across this media platform. You’ll help shape and drive the technical direction from ingestion through transcoding, packaging, storage, delivery, and playback. This is a role for someone who thinks in systems, understands the trade-offs between codec choices and infrastructure costs, and can drive technical strategy across multiple teams at scale.

What You'll Do

• Define and drive the long-term architectural direction for Spotify's media pipeline across Content Platform.
• Lead large-scale technical initiatives that span multiple squads and organizations, including projects such as media delivery, codec rollouts, and future playback capabilities.
• Partner closely with engineering managers, product managers, and senior engineers to align technical strategy with product priorities, reliability goals, and cost efficiency, acting as a key technical counterpart for media architecture.
• Guide architectural decisions across media ingestion, transcoding, packaging, storage, content delivery, and playback.
• Author and review RFCs, architecture decision records, and technical design documents that guide engineering teams and leadership.
• Mentor senior engineers across the organization, helping raise technical quality, architectural thinking, and engineering excellence.
• Bring a cost-aware engineering mindset by understanding how media architecture decisions impact compute, storage, CDN utilization, and long-term platform sustainability.

Who You Are

• You have deep expertise building large-scale media platforms spanning audio, video, encoding, transcoding, packaging, delivery, and playback technologies.
• You have successfully led architecture across multiple engineering teams and influenced technical direction beyond your immediate organization.
• You have significant experience designing and operating distributed systems at internet scale, including high-throughput media processing, large-scale storage, and globally distributed delivery infrastructure.
• You understand the architectural trade-offs between codecs, packaging formats, playback technologies, storage, networking, and infrastructure costs.
• You have a strong track record of leading multi-quarter technical initiatives from initial proposal through implementation and organization-wide adoption.
• You communicate technical ideas clearly through well-structured RFCs, design documents, and architectural decision records.
• You build trust through collaboration and technical credibility, bringing together teams with different priorities to deliver shared outcomes.
• You enjoy mentoring experienced engineers and helping organizations grow their technical capability.
• Experience working with cloud infrastructure providers, CDN vendors, and large-scale media delivery ecosystems is highly valued.

Where You'll Be

• This role is based in London or Stockholm
• We offer you the flexibility to work where you work best! There will be some in person meetings, but still allows for flexibility to work from home.

Learn about life at Spotify

Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what’s playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It’s in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens.

At Spotify, we are passionate about inclusivity and making sure our entire recruitment process is accessible to everyone. We have ways to request reasonable accommodations during the interview process and help assist in what you need. If you need accommodations at any stage of the application or interview process, please let us know - we’re here to support you in any way we can.

• Extensive learning opportunities, through our dedicated team, GreenHouse.
• Flexible share incentives letting you choose how you share in our success.
• Global parental leave, six months off - for all new parents.
• All The Feels, our employee assistance program and self-care hub.
• Flexible public holidays, swap days off according to your values and beliefs.