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Patreon

Technology, Information and Internet · 1.2k people

Staff Backend Engineer, Video Platform

Posted 26 Oct

What’s this role about? You will lead the architecture and delivery of live video systems, including ingest, transcoding, and playback, while building scalable backend services. Additionally, you will drive vendor evaluations, establish observability practices, and mentor engineers to ensure high-quality, reliable streaming experiences.

San Francisco, California
Hybrid
$258 – $386
Full-time
10+ years exp
600 Townsend St, Suite 500, San Francisco, California 94103

Skills required

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Company

About Patreon Patreon is the best place for creators to build community with their biggest fans, share exclusive work, and turn their passions into lasting creative businesses. Hundreds of thousands of video creators, podcasters, musicians, writers, game developers, and more are achieving creative and financial freedom doing what they love on Patreon, powered directly by fans who love what they do. Our endgame? A future where creators are in control, and real community thrives.

Patreon

Creativity, powered by you

FundingCreativityTechnologyMusicCurated WebVideo GamesPodcastsMusic VideoArtistsDevelopers
PPatreon logo
201-500 employees
Technology, Information and Internet
2013
Privately Held
Raised $413.3M

Qualification

TechnologySoftwareEngineering
  • Significant experience building and operating large-scale backend systems, with demonstrated technical leadership across teams.
  • Experience architecting and delivering live video systems supporting large audiences, ideally 100,000+ concurrent viewers.
  • Deep knowledge of live streaming technologies, including HLS, low-latency HLS, and WebRTC, and the trade-offs between latency, quality, reliability, and cost.
  • Experience diagnosing and improving streaming behavior, including buffering, adaptive bitrate delivery, stream failures, and the impact of packet loss.
  • Experience delivering broadcast and playback capabilities across web, iOS, and Android in partnership with client engineering teams.
  • Strong foundations in distributed systems, APIs, data storage, caching, queues, and event-driven architectures.
  • Experience evaluating and integrating video vendors, including understanding SDK limitations, quotas, scaling constraints, and pricing models.
  • A strong operational mindset, with experience defining video quality metrics, running load tests, debugging production issues, and supporting on-call coverage for live systems and major events.
  • Experience operating cloud-native systems using technologies such as AWS and Kubernetes.
  • Proficiency in Python, Go, or a similar backend language, with a commitment to hands-on engineering.
  • Ability to explain technical trade-offs clearly, guide cross-functional decisions, and translate ambiguous needs into a technical roadmap.
  • Experience mentoring engineers and establishing technical standards that improve system quality and team effectiveness.
  • Patreon powers creators to do what they love and get paid by the people who love what they do. Our team is passionate about making this mission and our core values come to life every day in our work. Through this work, our Patronauts
  • Put Creators First | They're the reason we're here. When creators win, we win.
  • Build with Craft | We sign our name to every deliverable, just like the creators we serve.
  • Make it Happen | We don't quit. We learn and deliver.
  • Win Together | We grow as individuals. We win as a team.
  • Patreon offers a competitive benefits package including and not limited to salary, equity plans, healthcare, flexible time off, company holidays and recharge days, commuter benefits, lifestyle stipends, learning and development stipends, patronage, parental leave, and 401k plan with matching.
  • Patreon operates under a hybrid work model, where employees based in office locations are expected to come into the office two days per week, excluding sick time and paid leave. The goal of this policy is to be intentional about the in-person time we spend together to strengthen the feeling of community at Patreon. Candidates hired into remote-eligible roles are not expected to meet the same requirements.
  • At Patreon, we believe in fair and transparent pay. In compliance with New York and California pay transparency laws, we are sharing the expected salary range for this role.
  • The posted salary range is dependent on the location and the level. This range may encompass multiple levels within the role's job family. The final offer will be based on candidate's experience, skills, competencies, and geographic location, aligning with the appropriate job level within Patreon leveling framework. For remote employees located outside CA and NY, salary may vary based on location and local market conditions.

Benefits

  • Salary
  • Equity plans
  • Healthcare
  • Flexible time off
  • Company holidays
  • Recharge days
  • Commuter benefits
  • Lifestyle stipends
  • Learning and development stipends
  • Patronage
  • Parental leave
  • 401k plan with matching

Interested in this role?

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