Staff Backend Engineer, Reddit

• BS degree in Computer Science, a similar technical field of study or equivalent practical experience
• 5+ years of industry experience in large-scale distributed systems
• 8+ 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, Thrift basics, and the ability to design and implement maintainable APIs
• Experienced with distributed caching layers, and distributed large scale data storage systems like Cassandra
• A track record of developing and improving highly scalable and reliable serving systems
• Experience mentoring engineers, owning team processes, and leading cross-functional projects is preferred
• Strong organizational skills, the ability to prioritize tasks and to deliver projects on schedule
• Entrepreneurial spirit. You are self-directed, innovative, and biased towards action in fast-paced environments. You love to build new things and thrive in ambiguity and even failure
• Excellent communication skills. You partner effectively with teams in a fully remote environment and discuss complex topics with technical and non-technical audiences

Desirable

• We’re looking for a backend engineer who is comfortable taking on the end-to-end delivery & technical leadership of complex services
• User Growth: This involves strategizing and implementing initiatives to attract and onboard new users to the platform. This includes optimizing the signup process, improving user landing experience, and exploring and leveraging marketing channels to drive traffic and acquire new users
• Reddit Logged Out Experience: This encompasses everything that users see, touch, and interact with before they log in to Reddit. Optimizing this experience is crucial for attracting new users and retaining existing ones
• SEO: This involves improving the platform's search engine optimization so that Reddit content can be well-represented in search results. This includes optimizing content, improving site linking architecture, scaling crawling and indexing from 3rd Party search engines to ensure that they can effectively crawl and index Reddit content
• Lead key technical and design decisions across all areas mentioned above
• 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
• Contribute meaningfully to team strategy. We give everyone a seat at the table and encourage active participation in planning for the future. Don’t just come along for the ride
• 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