Senior Staff Software Engineer, Client Architecture
Job description
Reddit is where 130M+ people a day come to share what they know, ask what they don't, and find their people. Every post, comment, and new format starts with our composers. We're looking for a Senior Staff engineer to be the technical anchor for how people create on Reddit across Web, iOS, and Android.
You'll own the cross-client vision for contribution. That means one shared content model and set of client contracts that all three platforms build against, the performance and reliability engines underneath, and the creation surfaces on top. Our modernized composers are now live on every platform, so the next chapter is growth: making video a first-class way to create, bringing new formats to every user, and using AI to inspire contribution without writing it for people. Every bet has to earn its way through an experiment, so you'll pair architectural judgment with real rigor about what moves the metrics. This is an IC leadership role, partnering directly with Product, Design, and Data Science leadership.
Key Responsibilities:
- Own the cross-client architecture: Define the shared contracts that Web, iOS, and Android build against, including our rich content model, GraphQL schemas, and shared UI primitives. A feature should be designed once and shipped natively everywhere, not built three bespoke ways.
- Make video and media first-class: Set the client architecture for video creation, editing, drafts, and upload, built to survive bad networks, app restarts, and lower-end devices.
- Bring new formats to every user: Establish how new contribution formats plug natively into the composers on every client, including formats that started on our Developer Platform. Unblock execution on the pillar's highest-upside bets.
- Drive experimentation rigor: Partner with Data Science on metric strategy for net-new features. Give engineers a clear recipe for designing and reading experiments, and make the call to iterate or kill when results come back flat.
- Bring AI into contribution thoughtfully: Shape where LLMs help people create, from inspiration at the start of the journey to routing and labeling at the end, while the content itself stays human. Model effective use of AI-assisted development tools, with rigorous judgment over what they produce.
- Lead beyond your team: Write the technical direction and get partner teams to adopt it: client platform, search, feeds, trust and safety, and the developer platform. Negotiate priorities and migrations, and mentor senior and staff engineers on every client.
- Raise the bar on client performance and reliability: Own composer success rates, latency, and crash budgets across platforms. Spot recurring pain points across technical designs and fix them at the root.
Qualifications:
- 10+ years of professional software engineering experience with a proven track record as a Senior Staff Engineer or Principal Engineer on consumer-facing mobile or web client applications.
- Client Architecture Expertise: Deep mastery of modern web architecture (e.g., React, TypeScript, advanced state management) with strong architectural command of native mobile paradigms (iOS/Swift, Android/Kotlin) to define unified client APIs and lead cross-platform engineering standards.
- Domain Expertise: Demonstrated track record of solving hard client-side performance and rendering bottlenecks at scale, building highly interactive features such as zero-latency rich-text editors, asynchronous media processing pipelines, or real-time state synchronization systems.
- Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills. Ability to influence VP-level technical direction and navigate strict tradeoffs between performance, reliability, and business impact without directly managing the engineers involved.
- Demonstrated ability to lead large, cross-functional engineering initiatives that balance technical excellence with aggressive growth targets.
Nice to have:
- Experience with contribution and creation surfaces: composers, editors, rich text and document models, media and video pipelines, offline drafts and sync.
- Browser engine, framework internals, or notable open source contributions.
- Building product surfaces on top of LLMs, including handling latency and unpredictable responses in the UI.
Benefits:
- Comprehensive Healthcare Benefits and Income Replacement Programs
- 401k with Employer Match
- Global Benefit programs that fit your lifestyle, from workspace to professional development to caregiving support
- Family Planning Support
- Gender-Affirming Care
- Mental Health & Coaching Benefits
- Flexible Vacation & Paid Volunteer Time Off
- Generous Paid Parental Leave
Pay Transparency:
This job posting may span more than one career level.
In addition to base salary, this job is 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. Additionally, Reddit offers a wide range of benefits to U.S.-based employees, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k) program with employer match, generous time off for vacation, and parental leave. To learn more, please visit https://www.redditinc.com/careers/.
To provide greater transparency to candidates, we share base salary ranges for all US-based job postings regardless of state. We set standard base pay ranges for all roles based on function, level, and country location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including, skills, depth of work experience and relevant licenses/credentials, and may vary from the amounts listed below.
In select roles and locations, the interviews will be recorded, transcribed and summarized by artificial intelligence (AI). You will have the opportunity to opt out of recording, transcription and summarization prior to any scheduled interviews.
During the interview, we will collect the following categories of personal information: Identifiers, Professional and Employment-Related Information, Sensory Information (audio/video recording), and any other categories of personal information you choose to share with us. We will use this information to evaluate your application for employment or an independent contractor role, as applicable. We will not sell your personal information or disclose it to any third party for their marketing purposes. We will delete any recording of your interview promptly after making a hiring decision. For more information about how we will handle your personal information, including our retention of it, please refer to our Candidate Privacy Policy for Potential Employees and Contractors.
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.
