Greenhouse ·
full-timeStaff Software Engineer - Site Defense
Reddit · Remote - United States
Reddit is a large-scale social platform centered on community-driven discussions and content sharing. The Site Defense team functions as the primary infrastructure layer responsible for protecting the site from network-level threats, including DDoS attacks, large-scale scraping, and automated bot abuse. As a Staff Software Engineer in this group, you will design, build, and maintain high-throughput, low-latency systems that manage traffic ingress across CDNs and internal infrastructure. The role involves developing real-time detection and mitigation strategies, integrating machine learning models for traffic classification, and ensuring operational excellence through end-to-end service ownership. You will collaborate with security and safety teams to balance platform performance with robust defense mechanisms while mentoring junior staff. This position is well-suited for experienced engineers with a strong background in distributed systems, networking fundamentals, and abuse prevention. Candidates should be comfortable working in a high-stakes environment where they will participate in incident response and the continuous evolution of defensive architectures to safeguard a massive user base.
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. For more information, visit www.redditinc.com . Reddit's Transport and Site Defense teams build and operate foundational infrastructure behind one of the largest sites in the world. These teams own how requests enter Reddit, how services discover and talk to each other, how traffic moves across clusters and clouds, and how Reddit protects itself from DDoS attacks, scrapers, bots, and other undesired traffic. We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to join the Site Defense team within Reddit’s Infrastructure organization. Site Defense is responsible for protecting Reddit at internet scale—serving as the first line of defense against DDoS attacks, automated abuse, large-scale scraping, and other network-level threats. This is a high impact role that sits at the intersection of distributed systems, networking, security, and applied machine learning. You will design and own the critical infrastructure that safeguards Reddit’s data from large scale attacks. You will: Design, build, and operate high-scale, low-latency systems that protect Reddit from DDoS attacks, bots, and automated abuse. Analyze, develop and evolve ingress-level defenses across CDN, edge, and internal infrastructure layers. Build systems to detect, score, and mitigate malicious traffic in real time at per-request and per-user granularity Partner closely within Infrastructure and with Security, and internal Safety teams to balance security, performance, and user experience Mentor junior engineers in their professional growth. Contribute to the team’s ML-at-Ingress initiatives, including experimenting with models for traffic classification, bot detection, and anomaly detection Own services end-to-end, including design, implementation, on-call, and operational excellence Participate in incident response and post-incident analysis for large-scale network or abuse events You have: 7+ years of experience building and operating high throughput and low latency production distributed systems. Software development experience in one or more general purpose programming languages; Python, Go, Rust, Java, C++. Excellent communication skills to collaborate with a service-oriented team and company. Experience with DDoS mitigation, WAFs, bot management, or abuse prevention systems. Experience with networking fundamentals (HTTP, TLS, TCP/IP, proxies, CDNs, load balancing). Nice to have: Experience with anti-abuse frameworks and bot scores (ReCaptcha, Datadome, Turnstile) Experience with browser fingerprinting frameworks (fingerprintJS, ThumbmarkJS) Familiarity with ML systems in production, especially real-time inference or feature pipelines. 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 #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 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
| Role | Staff Software Engineer - Site Defense |
|---|---|
| Company | |
| Location | Remote - United States |
| Compensation | Not disclosed |
| Posted | 2026-10-01 |
| Deadline | Rolling |
Typical process for this type of role
A general guide — the exact steps for this specific listing may vary; check the original posting for details.
- 1ApplicationSubmit your resume through the apply link.
- 2ScreeningRecruiter reviews your background against the role.
- 3AssessmentA technical test, assignment, or coding round, depending on the role.
- 4Interview(s)One or more rounds with the hiring team.
- 5OfferOffer letter with compensation and start date.
Before you apply
0/4Staff Software Engineer - Site Defense at Reddit: frequently asked questions
- What is the salary for this role?
- Reddit has not stated compensation in the listing. Check the original posting or ask during the application process.
- Is the Staff Software Engineer - Site Defense position remote, hybrid or onsite?
- The listing marks this role as remote, with Remote - United States as the location.
- What is the application deadline?
- Reddit has not listed a fixed deadline, so apply early in case the opening is filled.
- How do I apply for the Staff Software Engineer - Site Defense role?
- Use the Apply button on this page. It opens the original listing on job-boards.greenhouse.io, where you submit your application with the company.
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