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Scribd is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to join the Core Infrastructure team, which builds and operates the foundational systems powering all four Scribd products: Scribd, Slideshare, Everand, and Fable. This role focuses on the Content Library, a unified storage and governance platform managing nearly twenty years of accumulated content—hundreds of billions of objects in S3 served to hundreds of millions of users monthly.
The Content Library is a sophisticated storage system providing transactional storage, dataset transforms with full lineage tracking, low-latency online reads, and comprehensive governance (access control, trust, deletion propagation). The platform is built in Rust using the modern data ecosystem (Apache Arrow, Parquet, DataFusion) with a Python userland that teams across the company contribute to directly.
You will design, build, and operate the Content Library's core Rust services at massive scale. Responsibilities include owning features end-to-end from technical design through implementation, testing, deployment, and production operations. You'll evolve the Python transform framework and developer experience, supporting engineers across the company through code reviews and well-designed APIs. You'll lead cross-functional projects with ML, search, product, and data teams, defining roadmaps and technical designs that balance scalability, performance, cost, and delivery.
Key focus areas include performance and cost-efficiency across the stack (query execution, Parquet layouts, S3 patterns, caching, database tuning), strengthening governance capabilities (data lineage, authorization, deletion propagation), and raising the engineering bar through mentorship and design reviews. The role emphasizes pragmatic technology choices, clear documentation, and thoughtful code reviews as mechanisms for scaling impact.
You'll work alongside the Content Library's architect and lead engineer, joining an existing team of Senior, Staff, and Principal engineers. The company supports Scribd Flex, allowing flexible work arrangements with occasional in-person attendance required for collaboration and culture.
