Senior Backend Engineer; Python + Distributed systems

About the Company

At Scribd (pronounced “scribbed”), 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 products:
Everand, Scribd, Slideshare, and Fable.

We support a culture where employees can be real and bold, debate and commit, and prioritize the customer. Flexible work‑style is encouraged through Scribd Flex, while intentional in‑person moments are required for all employees.

The ML Data Engineering team powers metadata extraction, enrichment, and content understanding across all Scribd brands. We process hundreds of millions of documents and billions of images, delivering high‑quality metadata that enables content discovery and trust for millions of users worldwide.

Our systems operate at massive scale on diverse datasets (user‑generated content, e‑books, audio books, etc.) and sit at the intersection of machine learning, data engineering, and distributed systems. We collaborate closely with applied research and product teams to deploy scalable ML and LLM‑powered solutions in production.

We’re seeking a Senior Software Engineer with deep experience building event‑driven, distributed, and scalable systems in Python. In this role you’ll design and optimize large‑scale data and service pipelines on AWS to support content enrichment and metadata systems, and work closely with cross‑functional teams to integrate machine‑learning models and LLM‑based components.

Primary backend language: Python. Other notable tools:
Lambda, ECS, SQS, Elasti Cache, Airflow, Spark, Databricks, Terraform, Datadog.

• Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and guidance across the organization, promoting secure coding best practices.
• Lead the design, implementation, and scaling of event‑driven, distributed systems for extracting, enriching, and processing metadata from large‑scale document and media datasets.
• Partner with Data Science, Infrastructure, ML Engineering, and Product teams to architect robust systems balancing scalability, high performance, and rapid iteration.
• Contribute to engineering strategy by identifying gaps, proposing new initiatives, and improving existing frameworks.
• Build and maintain scalable APIs and backend services for high‑throughput content processing.
• Leverage AWS services (ECS, Lambda, SQS, Elasti Cache, Cloud Watch) to design and deploy resilient, high‑performance systems.
• Optimize and refactor existing backend systems for scalability, reliability, and performance.
• Ensure system health and data integrity through monitoring, observability, and automated testing.

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, focused on backend or distributed systems development.
• Strong proficiency in Python (5+ years); experience with Scala is a plus.
• Expertise designing and architecting large‑scale event‑driven and distributed systems.
• Strong cloud expertise with AWS (ECS, Lambda, SQS, SNS, Cloud Watch, etc.).
• Experience with infrastructure‑as‑code tools like Terraform.
• Solid understanding of system performance, profiling, and optimization.
• Experience leading technical projects and mentoring engineers.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent professional experience.
• Bonus: Familiarity with data processing frameworks (Spark, Databricks) and workflow orchestration tools.
• Bonus: Experience integrating ML or LLM‑based models into production systems.

Base pay ranges (US & Canada):
San Francisco (CA): $146,500 – $228,000
Other US markets: $120,000 – $217,000
Canada (CAD): $153,000 – $202,000
For additional factors and level adjustments, consult the HR team. This position also offers competitive equity ownership and a comprehensive benefits package.

• Healthcare, medical/dental/vision (100% employee coverage)
• 12‑week paid parental leave
• Short‑term/long‑term disability plans
• 401k/RSP matching
• Onboarding stipend for home‑office equipment
• Learning & Development allowance and programs
• Quarterly stipend for wellness, Wi‑Fi, etc.
• Mental health support & resources
• Free subscription to Scribd products
• Referral…