Senior Software Engineer, Backend (Contractor)

The Reddit of today is built on top of communities (subreddits) where conversation happens daily about millions of different topics. There’s a gap for people who want to have casual conversations in a lively and immediate way due to the forum-like structure of Posts and Comments. The Chat team has the ambitious goal of making synchronous conversations a core part of the Reddit community experience. We believe that giving users a more casual way to communicate will unlock new ways for communities to grow.

We are hiring a Senior Backend Engineer who can move incredibly fast while delivering a quality product. You'll work on the highest impact project in a team of brilliant engineers like yourself. In addition to building technology, you’ll contribute to the product and business strategy.

Responsibilities

On the team, you will:

• Move fast while balancing quality. We can’t afford extensive processes, and we also can’t afford show-stopping bugs. We need people who can balance speed with quality while quickly building brand-new products.
• 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.
• Communicate effectively, within the team and across disciplines. Work closely with product managers and designers to craft compelling user experiences.

Qualifications

• 5+ years backend development experience with multiple parts of the backend stack, from databases to networking to efficient computing. We develop with Go, Python, Postgres, Redis, Cassandra, Thrift, GraphQL and deploy to Docker/k8s on AWS.
• Ability to design and implement complex distributed systems operating under high load.
• Experience developing customer-facing public applications is preferred. 
• Experience with chat products is a plus.
• Entrepreneurial spirit. On our team, everyone needs to act like a startup CEO. You must be self-directed, innovative, and biased towards action in fast-paced environments. You live to build new things and thrive in ambiguity and even failure.
• Excellent communication skills. You must be able to collaborate effectively with teams in a fully-remote environment, and discuss complex topics with technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience with Go is not required! All of us learned along the way, and so can you.

Reddit is continuing to grow our teams with the best talent. We're completely remote friendly and continue to be after the pandemic. Apply today to learn more!