Principal Software Engineer, Infrastructure
Remote · San Francisco, CA · $287k–$401k a year · Posted November 11, 2026
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Where San Francisco, CA ranks
Where San Francisco, CA placed in our monthly rankings, month by month. Each month stays online at its own address.
November 2026
- #1Best cities for security jobs316 openings · of 20
- #1Best cities for technology jobs7,178 openings · of 100
- #1Best cities for financial services pay after cost of living$173k · of 33
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- #1Cities with the most jobs that do not need a four-year degree in the West Coast902 jobs · of 47
Rankings about engineering jobs
- Best cities for software and engineering jobs #1 San Francisco (3,412 openings)
- Best cities for engineering pay after cost of living #1 San Mateo ($216k)
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- Employers with the most engineering jobs #1 Amazon (2,992 roles)
Pay compared with the market
This listing pays about $344,050 a year. Across 51 open principal software engineer listings that state pay, the middle half runs $205,500 to $274,000 and the median is $240,000. That is 43% above the median, above the middle half of those listings.
Listed pay is what employers advertise, not what people are paid.
Principal Software Engineer salaries by state · Check your own pay
How AI is used in this kind of work
Among software developers, AI is already used for some of the tasks. Measured exposure for software developers: 29% (some).
Share of this job’s tasks that AI is already used for at work, from real usage. It is not a forecast of job loss, and a low number means no use seen yet. Source: Anthropic Economic Index.
Skills this job asks for
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About the job
Reddit is a community of communities. It’s built on shared interests, passion, and trust, and is home to the most open and authentic conversations on the internet. Every day, Reddit users submit, vote, and comment on the topics they care most about. With 100,000+ active communities and approximately 130 million daily active unique visitors, Reddit is one of the internet’s largest sources of information. For more information, visit www.redditinc.com .
The Infrastructure organization has the mission of building and delivering the compute orchestration environment, storage and data systems, and essential platform services behind all of Reddit.
The Infrastructure organization is looking to hire a backend software engineer to work collaboratively on a team dedicated to building out Reddit’s multi-cloud compute infrastructure. This is a high impact role where you will contribute to design, implementation, and operations for one of the largest sites in the world. The Infrastructure team’s mission is to provide a platform for teams to independently and effectively run their compute workloads in a performant, reliable, and secure way.
The position is a mix of software engineering and devops; a lot of the time, we are writing software to improve our compute infrastructure. But there is a substantial amount of troubleshooting and analysis to understand the real problems we face as we scale, and our customer’s workloads change.
What you’ll do:
Work collaboratively with a team of software engineers and systems engineers to create and maintain the foundational platform for running Reddit’s infrastructure.
Design, write, and deliver software to improve the availability, scalability, latency, and efficiency of Reddit’s products in Go and sometimes Python.
Guide and contribute feedback to the technical and strategic direction of the compute platform
Automate critical aspects of the development process such as service creation and management, as well as critical infrastructure operations.
Mentor backend developers across the company.
Be the go-to person for developers on complex problems
Who you might be:
10+ years of experience developing internet-scale software, preferably in infrastructure roles.
8+ years experience with cloud infrastructure systems is a plus (Kubernetes, AWS / GCE ecosystems).
Experience in influencing larger (500+ engineers) organizations on technical direction/best practices.
Experience working with cross-functional teams such as design, product, data teams to deliver great user experiences.
Strong focus on user experience, usability, scalability, and quality. You are an undying advocate for the user, and you have a deep intuition for how people think and how they interact with software at scale.
Software development experience in one or more general purpose programming languages; Python, Go, Rust, Java, C++.
Excellent communication skills to collaborate with a service-oriented team and company.
Benefits:
Comprehensive Healthcare Benefits and Income Replacement Programs
401k with Employer Match
Global Benefit programs that fit your lifestyle, from workspace to professional development to caregiving support
Family Planning Support
Gender-Affirming Care
Mental Health & Coaching Benefits
Flexible Vacation & Paid Volunteer Time Off
Generous Paid Parental Leave
Pay Transparency:
This job posting may span more than one career level.
In addition to base salary, this job is eligible to receive equity in the form of restricted stock units, and depending on the position offered, it may also be eligible to receive a commission. Additionally, Reddit offers a wide range of benefits to U.S.-based employees, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k) program with employer match, generous time off for vacation, and parental leave. To learn more, please visit https://www.redditinc.com/careers/ .
To provide greater transparency to candidates, we share base salary ranges for all US-based job postings regardless of state. We set standard base pay ranges for all roles based on function, level, and country location, benchmarked against similar stage growth companies. Final offer amounts are determined by multiple factors including, skills, depth of work experience and relevant licenses/credentials, and may vary from the amounts listed below.
The base salary range for this position is: $286,700 — $401,400 USD
In select roles and locations, the interviews will be recorded, transcribed and summarized by artificial intelligence (AI). You will have the opportunity to opt out of recording, transcription and summarization prior to any scheduled interviews.
During the interview, we will collect the following categories of personal information: Identifiers, Professional and Employment-Related Information, Sensory Information (audio/video recording), and any other categories of personal information you choose to share with us. We will use this information to evaluate your application for employment or an independent contractor role, as applicable. We will not sell your personal information or disclose it to any third party for their marketing purposes. We will delete any recording of your interview promptly after making a hiring decision. For more information about how we will handle your personal information, including our retention of it, please refer to our Candidate Privacy Policy for Potential Employees and Contractors .
Reddit is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, and is committed to building a workforce representative of the diverse communities we serve. Reddit is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and disabled veterans in our job application procedures. If, due to a disability, you need an accommodation during the interview process, please let your recruiter know.