Staff Engineer - Ads Trust, Fraud and Safety

Reddit Reddit · Consumer · United States · Remote · Ads Engineering

Staff Engineer role focused on building and leading the technical strategy for a new fraud detection system within Reddit's Ads Safety team. This involves architecting backend services, developing scalable systems, and potentially integrating LLMs for detecting deceptive ads, malware, phishing, scams, and billing fraud. The role requires strong software engineering, distributed systems, and leadership skills, with a focus on cross-functional collaboration.

What you'd actually do

  1. Work with the team to select, scope, and drive high-leverage projects that accelerate the development of Fraud Detection to help Reddit achieve its ambitious goals.
  2. Help define the 2+ year technical roadmap for the platform, translating complex business needs into a clear strategy for highly available and performant backend services.
  3. Execute on a strategy to create world-class Fraud Detection systems.
  4. Mentor, coach, and collaborate with other technical contributors, fostering a culture of empathetic technical excellence and proactive problem-solving.
  5. Work together with a variety of cross-functional teams, including Product Management, Policy and Legal, to ensure Fraud Detection meets the needs of all stakeholders.

Skills

Required

  • 7+ years of software engineering experience
  • large-scale distributed systems
  • highly scalable and reliable backend services
  • general-purpose programming language (e.g., Go, Python, Scala, Java, or C++)
  • disambiguate complex problems
  • align stakeholders
  • prioritize to execute effectively
  • communication skills
  • influence decisions

Nice to have

  • Tech Lead or similar function
  • Ads team experience
  • Ads Fraud, Ad review or Ads Brand Safety experience
  • designing, building, and operating scalable platforms
  • Expertise in Python and/or Go
  • Fraud/Malicious actors space experience
  • utilizing LLMs in production systems

What the JD emphasized

  • primary technical driver for the new Fraud detection system
  • drive the long term strategy for the platform
  • taking overall ownership of a critical function
  • technically adept deep coder
  • force multiplier
  • lead large-scale projects through the entire software development lifecycle
  • 7+ years of software engineering experience
  • track record of leading large-scale technical projects
  • cross-team and cross-functional collaboration
  • Strong experience in large-scale distributed systems
  • developing highly scalable and reliable backend services
  • Expertise in at least one general-purpose programming language
  • Demonstrated ability to disambiguate complex problems
  • align stakeholders with different priorities
  • aggressively prioritize to execute effectively
  • Proven track record of utilizing LLMs in production systems

Other signals

  • fraud detection
  • malware
  • phishing
  • scams
  • billing fraud
  • deceptive ads
  • LLMs in production