Senior Staff Software Engineer, Client Architecture

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 130 million daily active unique visitors, Reddit is one of the internet’s largest sources of information. The Content Ecosystem organization fuels Reddit's contribution flywheel by integrating posting, commenting, community building, and professional platforms into interlocking growth loops. We lower the friction required to create content and guide new communities from day zero to a thriving state. Additionally, we consolidate professional presence into a trusted hub for creators while serving as the foundational shield for platform data defense and safety mandates. Ultimately, our goal is to move Reddit beyond consumption-only usage, driving daily active user growth by turning passive lurkers into meaningful contributors. We need a web client and mobile consumer product domain expert to lead the architectural overhaul of our post and comment composers across all platforms. As a Senior Staff Engineer, you will define the multi-year technical vision for how users create content on Reddit. You will focus on continued modernization of our composers and building out new contribution formats, particularly the future of video creation and editing. By removing client-side friction, integrating intelligent posting/commenting user empowerment, and setting the standard for client performance, you will be the technical cornerstone for accelerating our global user contribution and content ecosystem growth. Key Responsibilities: Architect for Scale: Define and execute the org-wide client architecture strategy to support seamless video creation, editing, and uploading directly within our shared composers. Establish the patterns for how all future formats integrate into the client layer. Accelerate Product Roadmap: Build and scale new contribution formats natively within the shared post and comment experiences. Unblock execution for high-upside strategic bets designed to reduce identity-risk barriers for sensitive content and productize viral, low-effort creation formats that convert passive consumers into active contributors. Mentorship & Org Leadership: Serve as the technical anchor for the Contribution engineering team and influence the broader Content Ecosystem org. Translate complex product requirements into actionable technical roadmaps and drive alignment across Web, iOS, and Android platforms. Leverage Modern Tooling: Thoughtfully utilize AI-assisted development tools to accelerate prototyping, system design, and coding, while applying rigorous judgment to validate and own the final outputs. Evangelize AI as a tool. Optimize Contribution Funnel: Lead the engineering of highly performant client infrastructure. You will tackle challenges like zero-latency rich-text rendering, resilient edge-optimized media upload pipelines, and complex state synchronization for offline and online editing to maximize global contribution success rates. 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. 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 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. The base salary range for this position is: $232,500 — $325,500 USD 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.