Senior Software Engineer (Python + Distributed systems)

Role Overview 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 running on AWS, supporting Scribd’s content enrichment and metadata systems. You’ll work closely with cross-functional teams to design reliable backend services that integrate machine learning models and LLM-based components when needed. This role offers the opportunity to work on cutting-edge generative AI and metadata enrichment problems at a truly global scale. Key Responsibilities Provide technical leadership, mentorship, and guidance to engineers across the organization, driving secure coding best practices. Lead the design, implementation, and scaling of event-driven, distributed systems to extract, enrich, and process metadata from large-scale document and media datasets. Partner with Data Science, Infrastructure, ML Engineering, and Product teams to architect and deliver robust systems that balance scalability, high performance, and rapid iteration. Contribute to the team’s engineering strategy, 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, ElastiCache, CloudWatch) 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. Requirements 7+ years of professional software engineering experience with a focus on backend or distributed systems development. Strong proficiency in Python (5+ years). Experience with Scala is a plus. Expertise in designing and architecting large-scale event-driven and distributed systems. Strong cloud expertise with AWS services (ECS, Lambda, SQS, SNS, CloudWatch, 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. Benefits Scribd Flex (flexible work model) Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage Mental health support and disability coverage Generous paid time off, including 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 stipendsComplimentary access to the Scribd, Inc. suite of products Enterprise access to leading AI tools Salary In San Francisco, California, the reasonable salary range is between $146,500 and $228,000. Outside California in the United States, the range is between $120,000 and $217,000. In Canada, the range is between $153,000 CAD and $202,000 CAD. This position is also eligible for competitive equity ownership and a comprehensive benefits package. Scribd, Inc. is committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We encourage people of all backgrounds to apply, and believe that a diversity of perspectives and experiences create a foundation for the best ideas. Come join us in building something meaningful. #J-18808-Ljbffr