Staff Software Engineer, Media Experience

About the Role

We are seeking a Staff 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 Reddit. 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.
• Contribute to the full development cycle: technical design, development, test, experimentation, analysis, and launch. Review 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 mentor junior engineers.
• Move fast while balancing quality.
• Collaborate with client engineers and platform engineers to improve performance of media across Reddit to serve better content globally.

Qualifications

• 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
• 7+ 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 deliver projects on schedule
• Excellent communication skills to collaborate effectively in a fully remote environment

What Will Set You Apart

• Demonstrated curiosity and commitment to staying up-to-date with advancements in video compression technologies
• Strong understanding of how to measure and improve video visual quality metrics (e.g., 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 client libraries around media (e.g., AVFoundation, VideoToolbox, video prefetching)
• Familiar with background data fetching
• Strong data analysis skills using SQL

Interview Process Notice

In select roles and locations, interviews will be recorded, transcribed, and summarized by artificial intelligence (AI). Candidates have the opportunity to opt out prior to scheduled interviews.