Staff iOS Engineer, Media Foundation

About the role

Reddit is a community of communities. It is 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. This role is pivotal within the Media Foundation team, essential to shaping Reddit's media experience across all devices. The position requires driving architectural decisions for a highly modular iOS video player that enables other teams to build features effortlessly while delivering first-class performance for users. You will partner with backend media infrastructure and CDN teams to optimize global delivery and performance. This role demands ownership of the end-to-end media pipeline on iOS, from asset management and streaming protocols to real-time video manipulation and playback reliability. You will guide other teams in seamlessly integrating with Reddit's video API and set standards that improve developer workflows across the organization.

Key facts

What you'll do

Architect a highly modular, easy-to-integrate iOS video player that enables other teams to build features effortlessly while delivering first-class performance for users.

Partner with backend media infrastructure and CDN teams to optimize global delivery and performance for media assets across diverse network conditions.

Work cross-functionally with product, design, and other engineering counterparts to execute on product and business strategy and build novel media products and features that our users will love.

Work with a team of thoughtful, fast-moving, and motivated engineers to set and define standards that improve developer workflows and recommend best practices.

Recommend and implement best practices for iOS media development, including AVFoundation, Core Media, and Core Video usage patterns.

Utilize AI-assisted development tools to accelerate prototyping, system design, and coding, while applying rigorous judgment to validate and own the final outputs for production readiness.

Coach and mentor engineers on the team to further their professional development in media integration and iOS performance optimization.

Ensure robust error handling, logging, and diagnostics for media pipelines to support rapid troubleshooting and high reliability in production environments.

Collaborate on the design and evolution of video API integrations to ensure seamless adoption across client applications and backend services.

Optimize video playback workflows for power efficiency, memory footprint, and startup latency on iOS devices at scale.

Contribute to the growth and strength of the media engineering team by driving technical discussions, code reviews, and architectural proposals.

Lead the definition of technical requirements for media features and translate product goals into high-quality iOS implementations.

Participate in on-call rotations to support media-related incidents and drive improvements to operational processes.

Engage with the broader Reddit engineering community to share knowledge, patterns, and lessons learned in media delivery on mobile platforms.

Requirements

At least 8+ years of experience as a software engineer developing user-facing iOS mobile native applications at scale, using Swift.

In-depth knowledge of AVFoundation for video and audio playback, asset management, streaming, editing, and exporting capabilities.

Strong understanding of Core Media for timing and synchronization and Core Video for buffer handling, essential for custom playback and real-time video manipulation.

Familiarity with HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), MPEG-DASH, MP4, and other streaming protocols, as well as working knowledge of streaming frameworks and CDN integration for optimized video delivery.

Familiarity with reactive frameworks (RxSwift, Combine).

Strong organizational skills, the ability to prioritize tasks and to deliver projects on schedule.

BS degree in Computer Science, a similar technical field of study or equivalent practical experience.

Entrepreneurial spirit. You are self-directed, innovative, and biased towards action in fast-paced environments. You love to build new things and thrive in ambiguity and even failure.

Excellent communication skills. You collaborate effectively with teams in a fully remote environment and discuss complex topics with technical and non-technical audiences.

Nice to have

Experience building and deploying media applications on iOS in large-scale, high-traffic environments.

Deep understanding of video codecs, container formats, and adaptive streaming implementations.

Experience with content delivery networks and edge caching strategies for media optimization.

Knowledge of automated testing frameworks for media playback on iOS.

Experience contributing to open-source media projects or publishing reusable iOS media components.

Familiarity with modern iOS architecture patterns such as MVVM, VIPER, or SwiftUI where appropriate.

Experience with continuous integration and deployment pipelines for mobile applications.

Practical notes

This is a full-time remote role based in the United States.

Work hours are flexible within a standard full-time schedule.

Candidates must be eligible to work in the United States without sponsorship at this time.

There are no travel requirements for this position.

Visa sponsorship is not available for this role.

The compensation details provided are inclusive of base salary and do not include potential equity or bonus components.