Staff Software Engineer, Messaging Infrastructure

Flawless Youth; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 210,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive Healthcare Benefits

401k Match

Flexible Vacation

Paid Volunteer time off

Flexible vacation & Reddit Global Days

Job summary

A technology company in San Francisco is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to enhance its messaging infrastructure using Kafka and Kubernetes. The role involves collaboration with a team to improve reliability and performance of systems, promoting event-driven architectures. Ideal candidates should have over 7 years of experience in software engineering, particularly in internet-scale applications. The position offers comprehensive healthcare, 401k matching, and flexible vacation policies.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience developing internet‑scale software, preferably in infrastructure.
• Experience with Kafka is a plus.
• Experience developing on Kubernetes or similar distributed systems.
• Strong troubleshooting skills for systems and software.
• Excellent communication for collaborating within a service-oriented team.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with a team of software engineers to maintain and enhance the foundational infrastructure platform.
• Develop software to improve the availability, scalability, latency, and efficiency of Kafka.
• Contribute to the technical and strategic direction of eventing.
• Automate critical aspects of event-driven development processes.
• Participate in on-call responsibilities.

Skills

Experience with asynchronous communication patterns

Strong troubleshooting skills

Excellent communication skills

Asynchronous messaging

Troubleshooting

Communication

Tools

Kafka

Kubernetes

Job description

Staff Software Engineer, Messaging Infrastructure

We are seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join our Messaging Infrastructure team. In this role, you will be at the heart of developing and scaling Reddit's messaging platform. You will be instrumental in engineering Kafka as a platform and promoting event‑driven architectures across the organization. This involves orchestrating Kafka in multi‑cloud, multi‑region Kubernetes deployments, creating software automation for managing Kafka clusters, and developing APIs and controllers for operating Kafka at scale.

You will also play a key role in promoting event‑driven architectures by working on schema registries, capacity management, and GitOps tooling to improve the developer experience with Kafka. Your work will directly impact millions of users and help build the future of Reddit.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with a team of software engineers to maintain and enhance Reddit's foundational infrastructure platform.
• Develop software to improve the availability, scalability, latency, and efficiency of Kafka and other messaging components.
• Contribute to the technical and strategic direction of eventing at Reddit.
• Automate critical aspects of the event‑driven development process.
• Participate in on‑call responsibilities.

Requirements:

• 7+ years of experience developing internet‑scale software, preferably in infrastructure.
• Experience with asynchronous communication patterns and solutions; familiarity with Kafka is a plus.
• Experience developing on Kubernetes or similar distributed systems.
• Strong troubleshooting skills for systems and software.
• Experience engineering large systems and managing projects independently.
• Excellent communication skills for collaborating within a service‑oriented team.

Nice-to-have skills:

• Experience navigating cross‑functional migrations.
• Experience mentoring other engineers.
• 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.

How to Apply

Interested in this position? Please submit your resume and cover letter through the application portal.