Staff Backend Engineer - Safety, Moderation & ML

Reddit is a community of communities home to over 100,000 active subreddits and approximately 130 million daily active unique visitors.

The Safety and Moderation organization builds detection, automation, and platform tools that keep Reddit safe, healthy, and scalable in accordance with Reddit Rules. The Proactive Detection team focuses on identifying platform-violating content and malicious actors before harm occurs, enforcing corrective actions automatically at massive scale.

As a Staff Backend Engineer on Safety, you will drive technical strategy, backend architecture, applied Machine Learning integration, and operational execution for one of the largest websites in the world. In this high-impact role, you will lead a team of fast-moving engineers, design distributed systems using Go, Python, Rust, or Ruby, and partner cross-functionally with Data Science, Product, and Operations to protect millions of daily active users.

Key Responsibilities

• Safety Architecture & Applied ML Execution: Drive the technical design, architecture, and execution of backend detection pipelines, integrating applied ML models to identify policy-violating content and bad actors.
• End-to-End Lifecycle Ownership: Lead full development cycles—including ideation, technical specs, development, automated testing, online experimentation, data analysis, and production deployment.
• Cross-Functional Strategy: Partner with Product Managers, Data Scientists, Operations leads, and Policy teams to execute anti-abuse strategy and shape team roadmaps.
• Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Lead, coach, and mentor junior and senior engineers, setting engineering standards, conducting rigorous design/code reviews, and improving developer workflows.
• High-Scale System Reliability: Evolve high-throughput detection services to handle real-time content streams with ultra-low latency and high accuracy across millions of posts and comments daily.

Requirements

Backend Systems & Engineering Depth

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience building and operating high-concurrency backend systems in production.
• Programming Language Proficiency: Deep hands-on experience in one or more core backend languages (Go, Python, Rust, or Ruby).
• Education / Experience: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related technical discipline (or equivalent practical experience).
• Technical Leadership: Proven track record of architecting distributed backend services, leading engineering teams, and mentoring technical talent.
• Execution in Ambiguity: Self-directed, biased toward action, and comfortable navigating complex, fast-paced technical and product environments.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Outstanding written and verbal communication skills to align technical and non-technical stakeholders in a remote-first organization.

Work Logistics

• Ability to work remotely within the United States or hybrid out of Reddit's office hubs (SF, LA, NYC, Chicago).

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct hands-on experience applying Machine Learning (ML) or AI models to product, trust & safety, anti-spam, or fraud prevention problems.
• Experience with large-scale streaming data pipelines (Kafka, Flink, Spark) and real-time inference infrastructure.
• Background building automated moderation, identity verification, or Trust & Safety platforms for high-traffic social networks or online marketplaces.

Total Rewards & Benefits

• Compensation & Equity: Base salary range of $217,000 – $303,900 USD + Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) + bonus eligibility.
• Comprehensive Healthcare: Top-tier medical, dental, and vision insurance options, plus income replacement and gender-affirming care.
• Family & Personal Support: Family planning support, generous paid parental leave, and mental health/coaching benefits.
• Retirement & Flexibility: 401(k) plan with employer match, flexible vacation policy, paid volunteer time off, and workspace lifestyle stipends.