Senior Software Engineer, Media Experience

Reddit; United States; Remote; USD 190,000 - 267,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare

401k Match

Global Benefits

Family Planning

Gender-Affirming Care

Mental Health

Flexible Vacation

Parental Leave

Job summary

Reddit is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to help build the next version of our media infrastructure. In this role, you will define the work on the technical components of how we ingest, process, store, and deliver video and audio content at the company.

You will tackle complex technical challenges to support our media product strategy and deliver high-quality media experiences globally. You will work cross-functionally with product, design, and other engineering counterparts to execute on

Qualifications

• BS degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years in large-scale distributed systems.
• 5+ years in professional software development with Go, Python, Java, or C++.
• Experience designing maintainable APIs (GraphQL, REST, HTTP, gRPC).
• Experience with Redis and distributed caching.
• Familiarity with image processing and delivery tech (image scaling, formats like WebP).
• Knowledge of streaming protocols (HLS, MPEG-DASH, MP4) and video codecs (H.264/HEVC/VP9/AV1).
• Strong organization and communication skills for remote collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with product, design, and engineering to build new media features.
• Contribute to full development cycle: design, code, test, experiment, analyze, and ship.
• Review code and design docs, provide feedback on specs and mocks.
• Mentor junior engineers and help raise technical standards across the team.
• Balance speed with quality to deliver brand-new media products at scale.
• Work with client and platform engineers to improve media performance globally.

Skills

Go

Python

Java

C++

GraphQL

REST APIs

gRPC

SQL

Distributed systems

Video streaming

Education

BS in Computer Science

Tools

FFMPEG

GPAC

AVFoundation

VideoToolbox

Job description

the company 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, the company users submit, vote, and comment on the topics they care most about. With 100,000+ active communities and approximately 130 million daily active unique visitors, the company is one of the internet's largest sources of information. For more information, visit www.redditinc.com.

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer to help us build the next version of our media infrastructure. In this role, you will define the work on the technical components of how we ingest, process, store, and deliver video and audio content at the company. You will tackle complex technical challenges to support our media product strategy and deliver high-quality media experiences globally.

Key Responsibilities

• Work cross-functionally with product, design, and other engineering counterparts to execute on product and business strategy and build novel products and features that our users will love.
• Contribute to the full development cycle: technical design, development, test, experimentation, analysis, and launch. You'll be reviewing code and design docs, giving feedback on product specs and mocks.
• Participate with a team of thoughtful, fast-moving, and motivated engineers. Contribute to standards that improve developer workflows, recommend best practices, and help mentor junior engineers on the team to grow their technical expertise.
• Move fast while balancing quality. We can’t afford extensive processes, and we also can’t afford show-stopping bugs. We need someone who can balance speed with quality while quickly building brand-new products.
• Collaborate with client engineers and platform engineers to improve performance of media across the company to serve better content globally.

Qualifications

• BS degree in Computer Science, a similar technical field of study or equivalent practical experience
• 3+ years of industry experience in large-scale distributed systems.
• 5+ years of hands-on, professional software development experience in one or more general purpose programming languages (Go, Python, Ruby, Java, C++)
• Experienced with GraphQL, REST, HTTP, gRPC, Thrift basics, and the ability to design and implement maintainable APIs
• Experienced with distributed caching layers, and distributed large scale data storage systems like Redis.
• Familiarity with image processing and delivery technologies such as image scaling, cropping, and image formats like progressive JPEG, WebP, etc.
• Familiarity with HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), MPEG-DASH, MP4, and other streaming protocols, as well as video compression standards (H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP9, AV1)
• Strong organizational skills, the ability to prioritize tasks and to deliver projects on schedule.
• Excellent communication skills. You collaborate effectively with teams in a fully remote environment and discuss complex topics with technical and non-technical audiences.

What Will Set You Apart

• Demonstrated curiosity and commitment to staying up‑to‑date with advancements in video compression technologies, including attending conferences, reading research papers, and engaging with the latest industry trends.
• Strong understanding of how to measure and improve video visual quality metrics (eg., VMAF, PSNR)
• Hands‑on expertise with tools like FFMPEG, GPAC and similar media frameworks for processing, modifying, and manipulating media streams.
• Experienced with client‑side technologies, familiarly with the client library around media (eg., AVFoundation, VideoToolbox, video prefetching)
• Familiar with background data fetching.
• Strong data analysis skills using SQL

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, the company 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:

$190,000—$267,000 USD

In select roles and locations, the interviews will be recorded, transcribed and summarized by artificial intelligence (AI). You'll 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.

*the company is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and is committed to building a workforce representative of the diverse communities we serve. the company is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veteran*