Software Engineer; Backend), Content Foundations

About Scribd

At Scribd, our mission is to spark human curiosity. We create a world of stories and knowledge, democratize the exchange of ideas and information, and empower collective expertise through our three products:
Everand, Scribd and Slideshare.

We support a culture where employees can be real, bold and committed as we embrace plot twists. Every employee is empowered to take action as we prioritize the customer. Scribd Flex gives staff the freedom to choose the workstyle and location that best supports their performance, while intentional in‑person moments foster collaboration and connection. Occasional in‑person attendance is required for all employees.

The Content Foundations team builds the systems that power how content is uploaded, processed and delivered across Scribd products. This includes ingestion, metadata extraction, early quality controls and the core artifacts that enable search, recommendations, AI/ML systems and the reading and listening experience.

You will join an experienced team working between messy, real‑world content and highly structured systems. File formats vary and metadata inconsistencies amplify tributions directly impact downstream teams and ultimately our customers.

• Improvements to upload flow
• Content quality and early‑stage validation
• OCR and content extraction for downstream ML/LLM use cases
• Evolving content formats to support downstream AI workflows
• Making content and metadata more accessible for downstream systems

• Contribute to core content systems: design and implement features within ingestion pipelines, metadata services and content processing workflows under guidance from senior engineers.
• Build reliable, observable systems that handle diverse file formats, malformed inputs, retries, asynchronous workflows and edge cases.
• Collaborate across teams: partner with ML Engineering, Search & Discovery, the Content Library squad and Product to balance performance, scalability and user experience.
• Improve content quality and discoverability: work with ML and Discovery teams to enhance metadata extraction, classification and enrichment.
• Leverage AI‑driven engineering practices: use LLM‑based systems and AI coding agents, and share learnings with the team.
• Grow your craft: learn the domain deeply, take on increasingly ambitious problems and develop your skill set.

• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience, including production‑scale systems.
• Experience with backend services, data pipelines or content‑processing systems; depth in any one area is sufficient.
• Comfortable working with messy data and building resilient systems.
• Proficient in at least one of Ruby, Python or Go, and willing to ramp up on the others.
• Familiarity with AWS (Lambda, SQS/SNS, S3) or similar cloud resources.
• Comfortable working with relational databases (SQL).
• Clear written and verbal communicator, able to collaborate with teammates and partner teams.
• Collaborative and curious, eager to learn from peers and contribute back.

• Experience with document formats (PDF, ebooks, markdown) and their internals (parsing, OCR, transformation).
• Familiarity with ML/AI systems (embeddings, chunking, retrieval pipelines).

Base pay is one component of your total compensation package and is determined within a range. In California, ranges are $126,000 to $196,000 for San Francisco. Outside California the ranges are $103,500 to $186,500. In Canada ranges are $131,500 CAD to $174,500 CAD. This role is also eligible for competitive equity ownership and a comprehensive benefits package.

• Scribd Flex (flexible work model)
• Comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage
• Mental health support and disability coverage
• Generous paid time off: vacation, sick time, holidays, winter break, volunteer time and sabbaticals
• Paid parental leave and family support benefits
• Retirement matching and employee equity
• Learning and development programs and professional growth opportunities
• Wellness and home office stipends
• Complimentary access to Scribd, Inc. products
• Enterprise access to leading AI tools

Employ…