Staff Backend Engineer, Top of Funnel

1 Month ago • 5-8 Years • Backend Development

Job Summary

Job Description

Reddit is seeking a Staff Backend Engineer for its Top of Funnel team. This role is crucial for user growth, focusing on introducing new users to the platform and engaging them. The engineer will lead end-to-end delivery and technical leadership for complex services, working on user growth strategies, optimizing the logged-out experience, and improving SEO. Responsibilities include making key technical and design decisions, collaborating with product and design teams, contributing to the full development cycle, and influencing team strategy. The role also involves mentoring junior engineers and balancing speed with quality in development. The ideal candidate has experience with large-scale distributed systems, professional software development in languages like Go, Python, Ruby, Java, or C++, and expertise in GraphQL, REST, HTTP, Thrift, distributed caching, and data storage systems like Cassandra. Experience mentoring engineers, owning team processes, and leading cross-functional projects is preferred.
Must have:
  • 5+ years of industry experience in large-scale distributed systems
  • 8+ years of software development experience in Go, Python, Ruby, Java, or C++
  • Experienced with GraphQL, REST, HTTP, Thrift
  • Experienced with distributed caching and large-scale data storage (e.g., Cassandra)
  • Track record of developing highly scalable and reliable serving systems
  • Strong organizational and prioritization skills
  • Excellent communication skills for technical and non-technical audiences
Good to have:
  • Experience mentoring engineers and leading projects
  • Entrepreneurial spirit, self-directed, and action-oriented
  • Worked at a social platform or consumer-focused company
  • Understanding of AI/ML intersection with user-facing products
  • Comfortable with high-level architectural decisions
  • Knowledge in data engineering, pipelines, and streaming/batch solutions (Kafka, Flink, Spark, Storm)
Perks:
  • Group Personal Pension Scheme with Employer match
  • Private Medical and Dental Scheme
  • Income Replacement Programs
  • Family Planning Support
  • Gender-Affirming Care
  • Mental Health & Coaching Benefits
  • Bike to Work scheme
  • Flexible Vacation & Reddit Global Days Off

Job Details

Reddit 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, Reddit users submit, vote, and comment on the topics they care most about. With 100,000+ active communities and approximately 101M+ daily active unique visitors, Reddit is one of the internet’s largest sources of information. For more information, visit redditinc.com.

The Top of Funnel team is key to user growth. By combining our knowledge of search engines, with an eye for the best user experiences we have the opportunity to introduce Reddit to new and unfamiliar users and transform them into deeply engaged users. 

We’re looking for a backend engineer who is comfortable taking on the end-to-end delivery & technical leadership of complex services.

Location:

Reddit has a flexible first workforce! if you happen to live close to our physical office location our doors are open for you to come into the office as often as you'd like. Don't live near one of our offices? No worries: You can apply to work remotely from the UK, Ireland or the Netherlands.

Problem Spaces You’ll Work In: 

  • 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.  

What You’ll Do:

  • 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.

What We Are Looking For:

  • 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

What Sets You Apart:

  • You’ve worked at a social platform or consumer-focused company, designing and scaling backend systems at massive scale.
  • You bring an understanding of the intersection of Backend with AI/ML on user-facing products.
  • You’re equally comfortable diving into codebases as you are making high-level architectural decisions.
  • You’re a thought leader and collaborative partner who thrives on tackling complex technical challenges.
  • Knowledge in data engineering including design, development and implementation of complex systems and data pipelines. 
    • Experience working with data streaming/batch solutions such as Kafka, Flink, Spark, Storm, or others. 

Benefits:

  • Group Personal Pension Scheme with Employer match
  • Private Medical and Dental Scheme
  • Income Replacement Programs
  • Family Planning Support
  • Gender-Affirming Care
  • Mental Health & Coaching Benefits
  • Bike to Work scheme
  • Flexible Vacation & Reddit Global Days Off

Reddit is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and is committed to building a workforce representative of the diverse communities we serve.  Reddit is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If, due to a disability, you need an accommodation during the interview process, please let your recruiter know.

Similar Jobs

FalconX - Lead Executive Assistant and Office Manager

FalconX

San Francisco, California, United States (On-Site)
2 Months ago
Illumina - Digital Business Solution Architect

Illumina

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (On-Site)
2 Months ago
Fandom  - Sr. DevOps Engineer

Fandom

San Francisco, California, United States (Remote)
1 Month ago
Granicus - Software Engineer 3

Granicus

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (Hybrid)
1 Month ago
zoox - Feature Validation Engineer

zoox

Foster City, California, United States (On-Site)
1 Year ago
Abnormal Security - Senior Software Engineer - Backend

Abnormal Security

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India (Hybrid)
10 Months ago
bohemia interactive - Node.js Developer

bohemia interactive

Prague, Prague, Czechia (On-Site)
3 Months ago
MURKA - Java Backend Developer

MURKA

(Remote)
4 Months ago
bytro studios - Senior PHP Developer

bytro studios

Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany (Hybrid)
3 Months ago
Activision - Senior Staff Backend Engineer

Activision

San Francisco, California, United States (On-Site)
2 Months ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded

Similar Skill Jobs

Postman - Staff Engineer, Developer Tooling

Postman

Boston, Massachusetts, United States (Hybrid)
3 Months ago
kaizen gaming  - Key Account Manager

kaizen gaming

Prague, Prague, Czechia (Hybrid)
1 Month ago
kaizen gaming  - Social Media Manager (Danish Market)

kaizen gaming

Sliema, Malta (Hybrid)
1 Month ago
Lytx,  Inc  - Staff DevSecOps Engineer

Lytx, Inc

India (On-Site)
3 Months ago
endava - Senior Business Analyst (Payments Industry)

endava

São Paulo, State Of São Paulo, Brazil (On-Site)
2 Months ago
bytedance - Risk Control Business Partner

bytedance

Singapore (On-Site)
3 Months ago
Highspot - Sr. Product Manager

Highspot

Hyderabad, Telangana, India (Hybrid)
6 Months ago
Beta Craft - Python Developer

Beta Craft

Pune, Maharashtra, India (Remote)
8 Months ago
Whatnot - Manager, Business Development

Whatnot

Los Angeles, California, United States (On-Site)
2 Months ago
London stock Exchange - Technology Resilience Analyst

London stock Exchange

Paris, Île-de-France, France (On-Site)
1 Month ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded

Jobs in United Kingdom

ISS Stoxx - Junior Product Manager

ISS Stoxx

London, England, United Kingdom (On-Site)
2 Months ago
Haleon - Principal Engineer

Haleon

London, England, United Kingdom (On-Site)
1 Year ago
Tesla - Customer Experience Specialist, Home Delivery

Tesla

Greenhithe, England, United Kingdom (On-Site)
5 Months ago
playground - Character Artist (All Levels)

playground

Royal Leamington Spa, England, United Kingdom (Hybrid)
3 Months ago
version 1 - kdb+ Engineer

version 1

London, England, United Kingdom (On-Site)
3 Months ago
Assystems - Project Manager

Assystems

Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom (Hybrid)
9 Months ago
Marsh McLennan - Energy and Power Insurance Client Executive

Marsh McLennan

London, England, United Kingdom (Hybrid)
1 Month ago
London stock Exchange - Senior Operations Manager

London stock Exchange

London, England, United Kingdom (On-Site)
2 Months ago
Revolgy - Data & AI Cloud Engineer

Revolgy

London, England, United Kingdom (Remote)
2 Months ago
Lockwood - Senior Data Analyst

Lockwood

United Kingdom (Remote)
3 Months ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded

Backend Development Jobs

Anzuio - Senior Backend Developer

Anzuio

Tel Aviv-Yafo, Tel Aviv District, Israel (Hybrid)
3 Months ago
Scorewarrior - Backend C++ Developer

Scorewarrior

Limassol, Limassol, Cyprus (On-Site)
1 Year ago
adglobal 360 - Backend Engineer

adglobal 360

Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan (On-Site)
2 Months ago
GameAnalytics - Senior Backend Developer (Python)

GameAnalytics

Copenhagen, Denmark (On-Site)
3 Months ago
eBay - Sr. MTS, Software Engineer (Backend)

eBay

San Jose, California, United States (Hybrid)
2 Months ago
playrix  - Lead Node.js Engineer (Server)

playrix

(Remote)
2 Months ago
Wildlife Studios - Senior Backend Engineer - Python

Wildlife Studios

São Paulo, Brazil (On-Site)
1 Month ago
LeoVegas - Senior Backend Engineer - Retention/Sports/iGaming

LeoVegas

Málaga, Andalusia, Spain (Hybrid)
9 Months ago
bytedance - Backend Engineer - AML Framework Development

bytedance

Singapore (On-Site)
2 Months ago
Beta Craft - Senior NodeJS Developer

Beta Craft

Pune, Maharashtra, India (On-Site)
1 Year ago

Get notifed when new similar jobs are uploaded