Senior Software Engineer, Community

About this role

<div class="content-intro"><div id="labeledImage.LOCATION" class="WIFG" data-automation-id="decorationWrapper"> <div class="WNHJ"> <div id="labeledImage.LOCATION--uid38" class="WE-Y WMXY WBAB WF0Y" data-automation-id="responsiveMonikerInput" data-metadata-id="labeledImage.LOCATION" data-uxi-form-item-child-list-index="0"> <div class="WJ-Y"> <p><strong>The <a href="https://www.nytco.com/mission-and-values/" target="_blank"><u>mission</u></a> of The New York Times is to seek the truth and help people understand the world. That means independent journalism is at the heart of all we do as a company. It’s why we have a world-renowned newsroom that sends journalists to report on the ground from nearly 160 countries. It’s why we focus deeply on how our readers will experience our journalism, from print to audio to a world-class digital and app destination. And it’s why our business strategy centers on making journalism so good that it’s worth paying for.&nbsp;</strong></p> </div> </div> </div> </div></div><p><strong>About the Role, Mission or Department Overview</strong></p> <p>This is an important moment in the life of The New York Times. We have declared ourselves a subscription-first company, staking our future on producing journalism that is worth paying for and is unparalleled in its quality, depth and breadth of coverage. Connecting our expanding readership to our quality journalism is one of our most important and exciting challenges as we move toward reaching our long-term subscription goals.</p> <p>We are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer to join the Community team and help build reliable, scalable services that power commenting, moderation and reader engagement experiences across The New York Times. You will work closely with product, design, data, mobile, and web engineers. Together, you will design and operate cloud-based systems that are secure, observable, and easy to evolve over time. Your primary tools will be Go on Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services.</p> <p>You will report to the Community Engineering Manager within the Storytelling organization</p> <p>At The New York Times Company, building an experienced and diverse workforce is an important part of our mission. We are committed to a hiring process that is inclusive, fair and transparent, and one that puts emphasis on our commitment to career development. Our teams are collaborative and value inclusion, diversity and personal growth.</p> <p>You show:</p> <ul> <li>Belief in our mission: You have experience with the news and for making The New York Times an indispensable daily destination for our readers.</li> <li>Technical competency: You have knowledge of backend systems, APIs, and cloud infrastructure, and keep up to date on changes in backend frameworks, languages and the broader developer community.</li> <li>Code cleanliness: You understand what makes code well structured, maintainable and flexible, and you aim to create a culture where quality code is valued.</li> <li>User focus: You care about how design, engineering and product decisions contribute to a seamless, engaging and enjoyable user experience for readers and internal users.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Responsibilities:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Design backend services and APIs that power web and mobile experiences, with an emphasis on performance, reliability and security.</li> <li>Lead architectural discussions and contribute to technical roadmaps, breaking down complex projects into well-scoped, deliverable milestones.</li> <li>Oversee services running in public cloud environments (such as Google Cloud Platform or Amazon Web Services), including deployment, scaling, monitoring and incident response.</li> <li>Collaborate with Developer Platform, SRE and partner teams to adopt shared infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, observability tooling and best practices.</li> <li>Improve the operability of our systems by adding instrumentation, metrics, logging and alerts, and by guiding post-incident reviews and follow-up work.</li> <li>Write clear technical documentation and provide thoughtful code reviews that improve for the team.</li> <li>Mentor other engineers, share knowledge, and help establish standards for backend and cloud development.</li> <li>Occasionally work at the speed of news to respond to new opportunities or issues in production systems.</li> <li>Demonstrate support and understanding of our<a href="https://www.nytco.com/company/mission-and-values/"> value of journalistic independence</a> and a strong commitment to our mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Basic Qualifications:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Have 5+ years of experience building and maintaining backend services in a production environment.</li> <li>Have proficiency in one or more backend languages (for example Go or Node.js/TypeScript) and familiarity with common application frameworks.</li> <li>Have experience designing and implementing HTTP/REST or GraphQL APIs, and message queue or event-driven systems.</li> <li>Have hands-on experience with public cloud platform services such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or Amazon Web Services (AWS), including managed databases, networking, and storage.</li> <li>Be comfortable working with containerization and orchestration technologies (e.g., Docker and Kubernetes) and infrastructure-as-code tools (e.g., Terraform, Cloud Deployment Manager or CloudFormation).</li> <li>Demonstrate proficiency with CI/CD tooling, automated testing, feature flag deployments, observability and monitoring.</li> <li>Have experience with one or more data stores (such as PostgreSQL, MySQL or other relational databases, and-value or document stores).</li> <li>Experience communicating updates and resolutions to customers and other partners with all partners, and can explain tradeoffs and constraints in terms that align with our goals.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Preferred Qualifications:</strong></p> <ul> <li>Work in a team with product, d