Software Engineer - Backend (Python)

About the role

The ML Data Engineering team at Scribd, Inc. powers metadata extraction, enrichment, and content understanding across all Scribd brands. We process hundreds of millions of documents, billions of images, and deliver high-quality metadata to enable content discovery and trust for millions of users worldwide. This role offers the opportunity to work on cutting-edge generative AI and metadata enrichment problems at a truly global scale.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement event-driven, distributed systems to extract, enrich, and process metadata from large-scale document and media datasets.
• 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.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver backend solutions that power ML-driven features.
• Optimize and refactor existing backend systems for scalability, reliability, and performance.
• Ensure system health and data integrity through monitoring, observability, and automated testing.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience on Python or distributed systems development.
• Strong proficiency in Python (3+ years).
• Experience with Scala is a plus.
• Proven experience designing and building event-driven, distributed, and scalable systems.
• Hands-on experience with AWS services (ECS, Lambda, SQS, SNS, CloudWatch, etc.).
• Solid understanding of system performance, profiling, and optimization.
• 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.

Qualifications

At Scribd, Inc., your base pay is one part of your total compensation package and is determined within a range. Our pay ranges are based on the local cost of labor benchmarks for each specific role, level, and geographic location. San Francisco is our highest geographic market in the United States. In the state of California, the reasonably expected salary range is between $126,000 [minimum salary in our lowest geographic market within California] to $196,000 [maximum salary in our highest geographic market within California]. In the United States, outside of California, the reasonably expected salary range is between $103,500 [minimum salary in our lowest US geographic market outside of California] to $186,500 [maximum salary in our highest US geographic market outside of California]. In Canada, the reasonably expected salary range is between $131,500 CAD[minimum salary in our lowest geographic market] to $174,500 CAD[maximum salary in our highest geographic market].

Skills

We are looking for a Software Engineer II with deep experience building event-driven, distributed, and scalable systems in Python. This role requires strong proficiency in Python and hands-on experience with AWS services.

Benefits

At Scribd, Inc., your benefits package includes:

• 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
• Roth and Traditional 401(k) retirement plans with company match
• Employee equity ownership
• Wellness and home office stipends
• Complimentary access to the Scribd, Inc. suite of products
• Enterprise access to leading AI tools