Staff Software Engineer - Ads Growth

Team Description

The Advertiser Growth team is the engine driving Reddit’s SMB revenue and active advertiser base. Our mission is to make SMBs successful on the platform and retain them as customers, a goal we are aggressively pursuing by evolving our platform beyond initial activations.

As we look to 2026 and beyond, the Retention focus of our team is critical. We are moving from simple acquisition to full campaign lifecycle support—building intelligent systems that help advertisers optimize their campaigns, understand their value, and remain active on the platform. This team owns high-impact initiatives like the 1 Click Campaign automation, reactivation flows, and sophisticated optimization tools that ensure every advertiser, from a first-time SMB to a returning large merchant, finds success on Reddit.

Role Description

Reporting to the Advertiser Growth Engineering Manager, the person in this role will be the primary technical driver and anchor for the Advertiser Growth Retention team. This is a high-agency position for a 'doer' who thrives on shipping code and driving outcomes. You will navigate ambiguity and take decisive ownership of the technical direction for our retention and optimization products, collaborating closely with Product Management, Data Science, and Design.

This role is best classified as the Tech Lead archetype of Staff Engineer. You will act as both a technically adept deep coder and a force multiplier for the team. You will be responsible for scoping complex growth experiments, architecting scalable optimization engines, and ensuring our retention infrastructure is robust and flexible. You will not just plan but build—maintaining a strong bias for action while raising the technical bar for the entire team through mentorship and code reviews.

What You’ll Do

• Steer: Work with the team to select, scope, and drive high-velocity experiments and features that directly impact advertiser retention and revenue (e.g., automated campaign optimization, churn prevention, serving side adjustments).

• Architect: Define the technical roadmap for 'full campaign lifecycle support,' designing systems that can intelligently guide advertisers through optimization, reporting, and reactivation.

• Build: Maintain a hands-on focus, executing on strategies to create world-class experiences for SMBs. You will lead the development of complex features like one click campaign configurations and targeting and ads serving optimizations

• Amplify: Mentor, coach, and collaborate with other engineers, fostering a culture of experimentation, speed, and technical excellence.

• Collaborate: Partner deeply with Cross-Functional (XFN) teams—including Ads Formats, Ads Signals, and Ads Serving—to ensure our retention products leverage the full power of Reddit’s ads stack.

• Evolve: Stay ahead of the curve on growth engineering best practices, driving a data-driven mindset where every technical decision is tied to business impact.

Qualifications

• Experience: 7+ years of software engineering experience, with a track record of leading technical projects in a growth or product-focused environment.

• Growth Mindset: A 'doer-focused' attitude with a strong bias for action. You are comfortable with rapid iteration, A/B testing, and making technical trade-offs to move business metrics.

• Backend/Full-Stack Expertise: Strong experience in developing scalable backend services and/or full-stack product features. (Note: The team uses Python/Go and works with web frontends often).

• Technical Ability: Expertise in at least one general-purpose programming language (e.g., Go, Python, Scala, Java, or C++) and ability to grow expertise in Reddit's stack.

• Leadership: Demonstrated ability to act as a Tech Lead—aligning stakeholders, breaking down complex ambiguous problems into shippable tasks, and unblocking the team.

• Communication: Excellent communication skills employed to drive consensus and explain technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders (PMs, Sales, Marketing).

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience as a Tech Lead in a Growth or Ads team.

• Experience with experimentation infrastructure (A/B testing frameworks) and data-driven product development.

• Proven experience building products for SMBs or self-serve advertising platforms.

• Experience with API integrations (e.g., Shopify, WooCommerce) or marketing automation tools.

• Expertise in Python and/or Go.

Benefits: 

• Comprehensive Healthcare Benefits and Income Replacement Programs

• 401k Match

• Family Planning Support

• Gender-Affirming Care

• Mental Health & Coaching Benefits

• Flexible Vacation & Reddit Global Days Off

• Generous paid Parental Leave  

• Paid Volunteer time off

#li-remote

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.

The base salary range for this position is:

$217,000—$303,900 USD