Building Reddit

Post Guidance and Community Safety with Phil Aquilina Jun 03, 2024

Reddit is a big place and the safety of our users is one of our highest priorities. Scaling that safety is a constant focus, and we’ve built and evolved many different tools to enable that, used by Reddit employees and by community moderators.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Phil Aquilina, a Staff Engineer on the Community Safety team. His team recently had a big win with the release of the Post Guidance feature, which is built on top of the Community Automations platform that he designed. He’s also been at Reddit for a while, so we’ll dive into his tenure at Reddit, why he’s still excited about coming to work, and how his work is making Reddit safer for everyone.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditEng

Front-End Craftsmanship with Lonni Ingram Apr 02, 2024

If you’ve visited Reddit with a web browser in the past few months, then you likely landed on our new front-end experience, internally named Shreddit. This new implementation took years to finish and the effort of many engineers, but the end result is a faster and cleaner experience that is easier than ever to use.

One of the engineers who works on that project, Lonni Ingram, joins the podcast in this episode. She’s worked on several different aspects of Reddit’s web Front-end, from the text editor to the post composer, in her role as a Staff Front-End Engineer. In this discussion she shares more about how front-end development works at reddit, some of the toughest bugs she’s encountered, and what she’s excited about on the web.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditEng

What’s Next for Reddit Tech Mar 05, 2024

From whichever perspective you look at it, Reddit is always evolving and growing. Users post and comment about current events or whatever they’re into lately, and Reddit employees improve infrastructure, fix bugs, and deploy new features. Any one player in this ecosystem would probably have trouble seeing the complete picture.

In this episode, you’ll get a better understanding of the tech side of this equation with this very special roundtable discussion with three of the people best positioned to share where Reddit has been and where it’s going. The roundtable features Reddit’s Chief Technology Officer and Founding Engineer, Chris Slowe, VP of Data Science and Safety, Tyler Otto, and VP of Infrastructure, Matt Snelham.

In this discussion, they’ll share what they’re most proud of at Reddit, how they are keeping users safe against new threats, and what they want to accomplish in 2024.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditEng

Unifying All The ML Platforms with Rosa Català Feb 05, 2024

Machine Learning plays a role in most every computer application in use these days. Beneath the shine of generative AI applications, there’s a whole other side to ML that includes the tools and infrastructure that allow it to handle Reddit-scale traffic. Taking something as complex as the machine learning lifecycle and scaling it to tens or hundreds of thousands of requests per second is no easy feat.

Rosa Català is the Senior Director of ML Content & Platform at Reddit. She has driven the design and implementation of a Unified Machine Learning platform that powers everything from feed recommendations to spam detection. In this episode, she explains how the platform was developed at Reddit, how ML is being used to improve Reddit for users, and her vision for where ML is going next.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/redditEng

Taking Security into SPACE with Reddit's CISO Flee Jan 09, 2024

As Reddit has grown over the years, maintaining the security of the company and user’s data has become an increasingly difficult task. The teams that manage this responsibility are spread out across the company, and internal organization has also become much trickier.

Enter Reddit’s new Chief Information Security Officer, Flee. He started at Reddit earlier this year and has already made a significant impact on Reddit’s organization and culture. In this episode, Flee describes the formation of the SPACE organization, shares how he approached entering the company’s c-suite, and reminisces about some early inspirations for his career in tech. He also shares some of his favorite music, programming languages and comic books.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng

Scaling Program Management @ Reddit with Rachel O’Brien Dec 05, 2023

Reddit is composed of many teams all working on various projects: everything from the iOS app to advertising, to collectible avatars. Keeping these teams focused and aligned to the core Reddit mission is no easy task.

Meet Rachel O'Brien, the driving force behind Reddit's Technical Program Management Office. She spearheaded the establishment of a centralized TPM function within the company, overseeing numerous recent advancements. In this enlightening interview, Rachel shares insights into Reddit's planning strategies, the collaborative role of TPMs in project execution, and the powerful tools employed to maintain high-level visibility of projects.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng

Growing Healthy International Communities Nov 07, 2023

Communities form the backbone of Reddit. From r/football to r/AskReddit, people come from all over the world to take part in conversations. While Reddit is a US-based company, the platform has a growing international user base that has unique interests and needs.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Country Growth Leads for France, Germany, The United Kingdom, and India. They’ll dive into what makes their markets unique, how they’ve facilitated growth in those markets, and the memes that keep those users coming back to Reddit.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng

Site Reliability Engineering @ Reddit with Nathan Handler Oct 03, 2023

Reddit has hundreds of software engineers that build the code that delivers cat pictures to your eyeballs every day. But there is another group of engineers at Reddit that empowers those software engineers and ensures that the site is available and performant. And that group is Site Reliability Engineering at Reddit. They are responsible for improving and managing the company’s infrastructure tools, working with software engineers to empower them to deploy software, and making sure we have a productive incident process.

In this episode, Nathan Handler, a Site Reliability Engineer at Reddit, shares how he got into Site Reliability Engineering, what Site Reliability Engineering means, and how it has evolved at Reddit.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng

Working@Reddit: Principal Engineer with Jason Harvey Sep 05, 2023

Reddit’s infrastructure hasn’t always been as reliable as it is today. And Principal Software Engineer, Jason Harvey, is one of the main people responsible for the progress and improvements that took the site from 8 hours of downtime a week to the current 99% uptime. He started at the company in 2011 and has been in the middle of most of the changes to the Reddit infrastructure since then.

In this episode, Jason shares how those improvements were implemented, what he does at his job every day, and how Alaskans like to meme.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Interns & New Grads @ Reddit Jul 27, 2023

This is part 2 of a 2-part series on Emerging Talent at Reddit.

Employees are the lifeblood of any company. And it’s important that the pipeline of new people joining is kept fresh and vibrant as the company matures. At Reddit, Emerging Talent is one of the main teams that ensures we recruit the best of the best from Universities.

In this episode, you’ll hear directly from interns and new grads currently at Reddit. They’ll share how they joined the program, what they’re working on, and the best snacks at the Reddit Offices.

Find out about all the Reddit Intern and New Grad opportunities at Ripplematch: https://app.ripplematch.com/company/reddit/

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Emerging Talent @ Reddit Jul 27, 2023

This is part 1 of a 2-part series on Emerging Talent at Reddit.

Employees are the lifeblood of any company. And it’s important that the pipeline of new people joining is kept fresh and vibrant as the company matures. At Reddit, Emerging Talent is one of the main teams that ensures we recruit the best of the best from Universities.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Deitrick Franklin, the manager of the Emerging Talent team, about how the program was developed, what interns and new grads can expect, and about his personal journey from engineering to recruiting.

Find out about all the Reddit Intern and New Grad opportunities at Ripplematch: https://app.ripplematch.com/company/reddit/

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site:https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Experimenting With Experimentation with Matt Knox Jul 04, 2023

Experimentation might not be the first thing you think about in software development, but it’s been absolutely essential to the creation of high-performance software in the modern era. At Reddit, we use our experimentation platform for fine-tuning software settings, trying out new ideas in the product, and releasing new features. In this episode you’ll hear from Reddit Principal Engineer Matt Knox, who has been driving the vision behind experimentation at Reddit for over six years.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng

Responding To A Security Incident with Chad Anderson Jun 06, 2023

Information Security is one of the most important things to most software companies. Their product is literally the ones and zeroes that create digital dreams. Ensuring that the code and data associated with that software is protected is of the utmost importance. In February of this year Reddit dealt with a security incident where attackers gained access to some of our systems. In this episode, I wanted to understand how the incident unfolded, how we recovered, and how Reddit is even more secure today. Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng

Working@Reddit: Head of Media & Entertainment May 02, 2023

There’s a lot that goes into how brands partner with Reddit for advertising. The combination of technology and relationships bring about ad campaigns for shows such as Rings of Power and avatar collaborations like the one with Stranger Things.

In today’s episode, you’ll hear from Sarah Miner. She’s the head of media & entertainment and her job is to build partnerships with brands so that Reddit is the best place for community on the web.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng

Collecting Collectible Avatars Apr 04, 2023

In July of 2022, Reddit launched something a little different. They supercharged the Avatar Builder, connected it to a decentralized blockchain network, and rallied creators from around Reddit to design Collectible Avatars.

Reddit users could purchase or claim a Collectible Avatar, each one unique and backed by the blockchain. And then use it as their avatar on the site. Or, they could take pieces from the avatar and mix and match with pieces of other avatars, creating something even more original.

The first creator-made collection sold out quickly, and Reddit continued to drop new collections for holidays like Halloween and events like Super Bowl 57. As of this podcast recording, over 7 million reddit users own at least one collectible avatar and creators selling collectible avatars on Reddit have earned over 1 million dollars. It’s an understatement to say the program has been a success.

In this episode, you’ll hear from some of the people behind the creation of Collectible Avatars. They explain how Collectible Avatars grew from Reddit’s existing Avatar platform, how they scaled to support millions of avatars, and how Reddit worked with both individual artists and the NFL to produce each avatar.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng

Working@Reddit: Chris Slowe CTO Mar 08, 2023

Many Reddit employees have been with the company for a long time, but few as long as Reddit’s Chief Technology Officer, Chris Slowe. Chris joined Reddit in 2005 as our founding engineer. And though he departed the company in 2010, he returned as CTO in 2017. Since then, he’s been behind some of Reddit’s biggest transformations and growth spurts, both in site traffic and in the number of employees at the company.

In this episode, you’ll hear Chris share some old Reddit stories, what he’s excited about at the company today, the impact of generative AI, and what sci-fi books he and his son are reading.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng

Reddit Recap Recap Feb 07, 2023

Maybe you never considered measuring the distance you doomscroll in bananas, or how many times it could’ve taken you to the moon, but Reddit has! Reddit Recap 2022 was a personalized celebration of all the meme-able moments from the year.

In this episode, you’ll hear how Reddit Recap 2022 came together from Reddit employees from Product, Data Science, Engineering, and Marketing. We go in depth into how the UI was built, how the data was aggregated, and how that awesome Times Square 3D advertisement came together.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng

r/fixthevideoplayer Feb 07, 2023

Video is huge on Reddit, but the video player needed some love. In 2022, teams at Reddit used a novel way to fix it, bringing in the community. A new community, r/fixthevideoplayer was born and after some intense bug-fixing, the video player saw massive improvements.

In this episode, we hear how the initiative came together and what engineering used to fix the biggest issues in the video player.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng

Working@Reddit: Engineering Manager Feb 07, 2023

You’d never guess it from all the memes, but Reddit has a lot of very talented and serious people who build the platform you know and love. Managing the Software Engineers who write, deploy, and maintain the code that powers Reddit is a tough job.

In this episode, I talk to Kelly Hutchison, an Engineering Manager on the Conversation Experiences. We discuss her day-to-day work life, the features her team has released, and her feline overlords.

Check out all the open positions at Reddit on our careers site: https://www.redditinc.com/careers

Join the conversation at: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditEng

Trailer Jan 22, 2023

Welcome to Building Reddit, hosted by Ryan H. Lewis. Ryan is a software engineer at Reddit, and he's fascinated by the inner workings of the platform.

Reddit's mission is to bring community, belonging, and empowerment to everyone in the world. In this podcast, Ryan will take you behind the scenes into how Reddit is built. From some of the coolest projects like Reddit Recap and Collectible Avatars, to the daily work lives of Reddit's employees. You’ll hear from software engineers, product managers, data scientists, community managers, marketers, and more!

So make sure to subscribe to the podcast. New episodes come out monthly. And you can join the discussion on our engineering blog at reddit.com/r/RedditEng.

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