Senior Staff Machine Learning Systems Engineer, Reddit

Feed Relevance

$266-372.4k

+ 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

GraphQL

Redis

Expert level

Remote from US

Online platform for thoughts, experiences and discussions

Open for applications

Online platform for thoughts, experiences and discussions

1001+ employees

B2CB2BPublishingContentSocial MediaCommunity

Open for applications

$266-372.4k

+ 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

GraphQL

Redis

Expert level

Remote from US

1001+ employees

B2CB2BPublishingContentSocial MediaCommunity

Company mission

To empower communities, and make their knowledge accessible to all.

Job

Company

Role

Who you are

10+ years of experience in backend software engineering, with a focus on architecting and scaling high-throughput, low-latency distributed systems for personalization or recommendation engines
Expert-level understanding of distributed systems, including real-time data pipelines, advanced caching strategies (e.g., Redis, Memcached), and storage layer optimization
Proven ability to lead technical strategy across organizational boundaries, partnering with Infrastructure and Platform teams to build extensible, "contributor-friendly" architectures
Adept at navigating complex system trade-offs, such as balancing architectural resilience and latency with the evolving needs of machine learning models
Strong communicator and mentor who leads through collaboration and technical excellence, with experience influencing best practices across a large engineering organization

What the job involves

As a Senior Staff Machine Learning Systems Engineer, you will help define and lead the vision for the systems that power the Reddit Home Feed
While this role sits within the Feed Relevance team, it is primarily a systems architecture and backend engineering position rather than a modeling role
We are looking for a distributed systems expert to own the 'engines' of personalization—the real-time serving pipelines, low-latency candidate retrieval systems, and high-throughput data fetching layers that allow our models to impact millions of users in milliseconds
Architect High-Performance Retrieval: Partner with platform teams to design and implement flexible, ultra-low-latency candidate retrieval solutions that balance discovery with computational efficiency
Optimize the Serving Lifecycle: Design and build "contributor-friendly" serving pipelines that allow backend and product engineers to safely inject logic and features without needing deep ML expertise
Build Predictive Reliability: Lead the development of sophisticated shadow-testing infrastructure to evaluate distribution shifts and system performance at scale before code ever hits production
Drive Cross-Stack Integration: Collaborate across the stack—from GraphQL layers to upstream infrastructure—to ensure the feed’s architecture is resilient, maintainable, and extensible
Performance Engineering: Identify bottlenecks in the feed's ecosystem and implement systemic fixes that improve the user experience

Our take

Reddits is an online platform that hosts thousands of message board communities (known as subreddits) designed to foster authentic human connection. With more than 100,000 communities covering everything from food, entertainment, and sports to niche interests for highly specific audiences, there's virtually a space for everyone.

The platform attracts over 52M daily users and more than 50B monthly page views. While these figures are smaller than those of social media giants like Facebook and X, Reddits stands out by offering easily discoverable communities where users can dive deep into virtually any topic imaginable.

Today, Reddit continues to grow its user base and expand its reach, remaining a unique hub for conversation,m connection, and shared interests. With its strong community-driven model and steady revenue streams, it's most definitely positioned to stay a central part of online culture for years to come.

Kirsty

Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle

Insights

Top investors

57% employee growth in 12 months

Glassdoor (3.7)

Company

Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)

Aug 2021

$410m

SERIES F

Feb 2021

$250m

SERIES E

Total funding: $1.2bn

Company benefits

Comprehensive health benefits
Flexible vacation & Reddit global days off
Family planning funds & 4+ months paid parental leave
Personal & professional development funds
Paid volunteer time off
Workspace & home office benefits

Company HQ

SoMa, San Francisco, CA

Leadership

Steve Huffman

(Co-Founder & CEO)

After co-founding Reddit in 2005, they stepped away from the company to co-found Hipmunk, where they were the CTO for 5 years. They returned to Reddit in 2015, and have been the CEO since.

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