Senior Engineering Manager, Content Platform

As the Senior Engineering Manager at Reddit, your main responsibilities include owning the design and evolution of core systems, leading and mentoring your engineering team, identifying and closing gaps in current designs, and collaborating with multiple engineering teams to ensure high-quality software delivery. You will play a vital role in transitioning from legacy systems to more modern, efficient solutions while improving developer workflows and user experiences.

To excel as a Senior Engineering Manager at Reddit, candidates should have over 5 years of experience managing high-performing engineering teams and over 7 years of experience with large-scale backend distributed systems. A deep understanding of API design, excellent communication skills, and experience with technologies like Go, Kubernetes, Cassandra, and Redis would significantly enhance your candidacy for this pivotal role.

The Senior Engineering Manager will contribute to Reddit's growth by steering the engineering team responsible for the Core Data Models and legacy stack. By designing and implementing scalable solutions, standards, and best practices for software development, the manager will help Reddit handle rapid user and revenue growth while enhancing service reliability and developer productivity.

Collaboration is vital at Reddit, especially for the Senior Engineering Manager. You will work closely not only with your Content Platform team but also with teams from Consumer Engineering, Ads Engineering, and the Ranking Platform. This collaboration allows the integration of multifaceted insights into the engineering process, ensuring that the solutions meet business needs while providing excellent user experiences.

Reddit offers an attractive package of benefits for the Senior Engineering Manager position, including comprehensive healthcare coverage, a 401k match, family planning support, and gender-affirming care. Additional perks include flexible vacation, generous parental leaves, and paid volunteer time off, making Reddit an employer committed to the well-being and development of its employees.

When answering this question, focus on specific strategies you implemented to lead teams successfully, ensuring high morale, engagement, and productivity. Highlight your approach to mentoring team members and managing challenges, while emphasizing outcomes and growth achieved during your leadership.

Discuss how a robust and scalable infrastructure is essential for performance, availability, and user experience. Emphasize the significance of distributed systems, reliability, and security and how you would ensure that these needs are met while supporting continuous growth.

Explain your methodology for assessing legacy systems, including identifying pain points and gaps. Outline your strategy for involving stakeholders in the redesign process, implementing incremental improvements, and transitioning to new architectures while minimizing disruption to ongoing operations.

Share specific projects where you were responsible for API design, detailing the technologies and methodologies used. Discuss your approach to ensuring that APIs are efficient, scalable, and well-documented, while highlighting any challenges you overcame in the process.

Discuss frameworks you use for project prioritization, such as evaluating business impact and resource availability. Highlight your collaborative approach in working with stakeholders to ensure that project priorities align with overall business objectives.

Talk about techniques you believe in for fostering a positive team environment, encouraging open communication, recognizing achievements, and providing regular feedback. Make sure to include examples of how you've implemented these practices in your previous roles.

Share your experience with fostering collaboration across teams, perhaps through regular meetings, joint projects, and open channels of communication. Discuss any tools you have used to improve collaboration and how they led to successful partnerships.

Be candid about your experience with challenges such as scaling issues, downtime, or latency. Explain how you've handled these challenges, focusing on the solutions you implemented and the lessons learned for future improvements.

Select a specific example where you led significant change, detailing how you communicated the vision, secured buy-in from the team, and navigated any resistance. Highlight the outcomes of the change and what you learned from the experience.

Discuss the importance of establishing a culture around best practices and continuous learning in your team. Explain how you implement processes for evaluating and updating practices, including training and resources provided to your team.