Principal Software Engineer, Ads Backend Engineering

Reddit, Inc.; United States; Remote; USD 260,000 - 366,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a Principal Engineer to lead the technical strategy for Ads Foundations. This senior role focuses on evolving the Ads backend to meet future advertiser and user needs, emphasizing platform architecture, scalability, and operational excellence. You will influence the technical direction, champion observability and reliability practices, and elevate the engineering team. Join a vibrant team dedicated to innovation and excellence in the fast-paced world of online advertising, where your contributions will shape the future of the platform and impact millions of users.

Benefits

Comprehensive Healthcare Benefits

401k Match

Family Planning Support

Mental Health & Coaching Benefits

Flexible Vacation

Paid Volunteer Time Off

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in scalable backend infrastructure.
• Expertise in distributed systems and backend architecture.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the technical architecture for Reddit Ads backend systems.
• Lead cross-org technical initiatives influencing backend infrastructure.

Skills

Backend Infrastructure Design

Distributed Systems

Performance Engineering

Collaboration

Technical Leadership

Programming Languages (Python, Go, Java, Rust, C++)

Job description

Remote - United States

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 101M+ daily active unique visitors, Reddit is one of the internet’s largest sources of information. For more information, visit redditinc.com.

The Ads Foundations org is where Ads Engineering, Product, ML Systems, and Experimentation efforts are combined to show the best ad to Reddit users. Our responsibilities include:

• Tech Evolution of the Reddit & Ads stack - Bringing the Ads tech stacks into the future leveraging existing Reddit centralized resources (Cloud/People/Know-how) and going beyond when required by ads unique scaling and performance challenges.
• Balancing the needs of two different customer types – advertisers and Reddit users.
• Engineering velocity & happiness - Unlock the shortest path, without compromising on quality, to build from proof of concepts to fully productionized systems using new ML models, targeting approaches and relevance measurements. We want to democratize developer velocity independently from the size or the amount of infra/system expertise a specific vertical team has.
• Cloud resources & Data observability - Standardize and apply best practices among all the vertical teams to be able to understand Cloud and Business impact for any given product launch. As we evolve as a public company, we also want to evolve our best practices when it comes to resources to teams/systems/components mapping to facilitate future refactors, optimization, and go to market initiatives.
• Cost of Revenue Tracking and Optimizations - Design, implement, and drive best practices for all development teams to ship cost efficient systems that can survive the test of time. The Ads Infrastructure team acts as the gate to validate the engineering excellence of a given system going live for millions of customers.

We are seeking a Principal Engineer to lead the technical strategy and vision for Ads Foundations at Reddit — the technical backbone powering Ads Monetization at scale. This is the most senior individual contributor role in our engineering organization, designed for those who drive not only complex systems but also organizational and industry-wide influence.

As Principal Engineer, you will set the technical direction for how Reddit’s Ads backend evolves to meet the next generation of advertiser and user needs — with a particular focus on platform architecture, scalability, reliability, and operational excellence. You will operate as a force multiplier: elevating not only our systems, but also our engineers, our org, and the industry at large.

What You’ll Do

Technical Vision & Strategy

• Define and drive the long-term technical architecture and platform strategy for Reddit Ads backend systems, anticipating future needs 3–5+ years out.
• Identify foundational gaps and emerging opportunities across Ads infrastructure, and lead strategic investments to address them.
• Architect systems that power billions of ad impressions with high reliability, low latency, and cost efficiency.
• Set standards for system design, scalability, and operational excellence that raise the bar across Reddit engineering.

Technical Stewardship

• Lead cross-org and cross-functional technical initiatives that span beyond Ads — influencing how Reddit builds backend infrastructure at scale.
• Partner deeply with Infrastructure, Data, Machine Learning, and Product teams to ensure cohesive, performant systems.

Operational Excellence

• Champion rigorous observability, reliability engineering, and cost-aware architecture practices across the Ads organization.
• Coach, sponsor, and elevate Staff and Senior Engineers across the org — shaping the next generation of technical leaders.
• Model a culture of technical curiosity, deep ownership, and high standards.

Industry & Thought Leadership

• Represent Reddit’s technical brand externally through talks, blog posts, patents, or contributions to open source.
• Stay ahead of industry trends in large-scale distributed systems, ads infrastructure, and backend engineering.

Who You Might Be

• 10+ years of experience designing and operating highly scalable backend infrastructure. Recognized technical leader with a proven track record of driving large-scale platform transformations.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems, backend architecture, infrastructure, and performance engineering.
• Skilled at driving clarity in ambiguous spaces, influencing technical strategy across organizations.
• Exceptional collaborator and communicator — adept at aligning technical vision with business outcomes.
• Expertise in one or more general-purpose programming languages (Python, Go, Java, Rust, C++).
• Strong experience with systems observability, reliability, and operational best practices.

Bonus Points

• Experience in AdTech, real-time bidding systems, or creative management platforms.
• Experience driving infrastructure cost efficiency and performance optimization at scale.
• Contributions to technical communities or industry research.
• Prior experience with Technical Program Management for multi-year infrastructure bets.

Compensation & Benefits

• Comprehensive Healthcare Benefits and Income Replacement Programs
• 401k Match
• Family Planning Support
• Mental Health & Coaching Benefits
• Flexible Vacation & Reddit Global Days Off
• Paid Volunteer time off

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 pay 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 pay range for this position is:

$260,800 - $365,100 USD

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 you need assistance or an accommodation due to a disability, please contact us at [e-mail].

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