Principal Software Engineer, ML Feature Platform

Reddit; United States; Remote; USD 266,000 - 388,000; Full time

Job summary

An innovative company is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the ML Feature Platform team. In this fully remote-friendly role, you'll architect and maintain foundational ML infrastructure that powers features for recommendations and content discovery. With a focus on building a state-of-the-art feature store, you will influence the technical strategy and collaborate with cross-functional teams. This role offers the chance to make a significant impact on the user experience for millions while enjoying comprehensive benefits and a flexible work environment.

Benefits

Comprehensive healthcare

401(k) match

Family planning support

Gender-affirming care

Mental health benefits

Flexible vacation

Generous paid parental leave

Paid volunteer time off

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Deep expertise in systems design and performance optimization.
• Strong understanding of ML infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical strategy and architecture for the ML Feature Platform.
• Collaborate with engineers across ML Platform to advance the infrastructure.
• Mentor team members in DevOps practices.

Skills

Software Engineering

Systems Design

Performance Optimization

Cloud-native Architectures (AWS, GCP, Azure)

Feature Engineering

Data Freshness

Real-time Data Systems

Communication Skills

Job description

Reddit is a community of communities built on shared interests, passion, and trust. It hosts open and authentic conversations with over 100,000 active communities and approximately 101 million daily visitors. For more information, visit redditinc.com.

Location: This role is fully remote-friendly. If you live near one of our physical offices, you are welcome to work from there as often as you'd like.

Who We Are: The Machine Learning Platform team at Reddit owns the infrastructure that powers recommendations, content discovery, and user/content quantification. The team directly impacts other teams such as Growth, Ads, Feeds, and Core Machine Learning.

What You’ll Do: As a Principal Software Engineer, ML Feature Platform, you will oversee the vision and lead the ML Feature Platform team. Your role involves architecting, implementing, and maintaining foundational ML infrastructure for computing, storing, and retrieving features that support Feeds Ranking, Content Understanding, Recommendations, Ads, and more, aligning with Reddit’s mission of community and belonging. You will design and develop a state-of-the-art feature store optimized for low-latency online inference at scale.

1. Lead the technical strategy, architecture, and development of Reddit’s next-generation, real-time feature store supporting both online and offline feature retrieval.
2. Collaborate with engineers across ML Platform and Reddit infrastructure to advance the platform.
3. Work with management on team goal setting, planning, and risk management.
4. Mentor team members in adopting rigorous DevOps practices to maintain and improve ML infrastructure health and quality.

Who You Might Be:

1. 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
2. 3+ years leading teams in designing large-scale distributed systems.
3. Deep expertise in systems design, performance optimization, and cloud-native architectures (AWS, GCP, Azure).
4. Strong understanding of ML infrastructure, including feature engineering, data freshness, feature versioning, and online/offline feature retrieval and consistency for serving hundreds of millions of users.
5. Proven experience building real-time data systems such as feature stores, stream processing engines, or caching systems.
6. Excellent organizational and communication skills.

Benefits:

• Comprehensive healthcare and income replacement programs
• 401(k) match
• Family planning support
• Gender-affirming care
• Mental health and coaching benefits
• Flexible vacation and Reddit Global Days off
• Generous paid parental leave
• Paid volunteer time off

#LI-DB1 #LI-Remote

Pay Transparency:

This job may span multiple career levels. In addition to base salary, eligible employees may receive equity in restricted stock units and, depending on the role, commissions. Reddit offers various benefits including insurance, 401(k), and generous time off. For more details, visit redditinc.com/careers.

To promote transparency, we share base pay ranges for all US-based roles, benchmarked against similar companies. Final offers depend on skills, experience, and credentials.

The base pay range for this position is:

$266,000—$387,400 USD

Reddit is an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and providing accommodations for individuals with disabilities or disabled veterans during the application process. Please inform your recruiter if you need an accommodation.