Software Engineer (Backend), Content Foundations
scribdinc · San Francisco ·
- Employment
- Contract
- Category
- Backend
- Experience
- 4+ years
scribdinc · San Francisco ·
Scribd, Inc. is on a mission to advance human understanding. Our four products — Scribd®, Slideshare®, Everand™, and Fable — help billions of people across the globe move beyond access and into insight, application, and expertise.
We support a culture where our employees can be real and be bold; where we debate and commit as we embrace plot twists; and where every employee is empowered to take action as we prioritize the customer.
We believe the best work happens when individual flexibility is balanced with meaningful community connection. Scribd Flex empowers employees to choose the workstyle and location that support their best performance, while committing to intentional in-person moments that strengthen collaboration and culture. Occasional in-person attendance is required for all Scribd, Inc. employees, regardless of location.
So what are we looking for in new team members? At Scribd, Inc., we hire for “GRIT.” Traditionally defined as the intersection of passion and perseverance toward long-term goals, GRIT reflects the mindset we expect from every employee. For us, it also serves as a practical framework for how we work: setting and achieving Goals, delivering Results within your role, contributing Innovative ideas and solutions, and strengthening the broader Team through collaboration and attitude.
This posting reflects an approved, open position within the organization.
At Scribd (pronounced "scribbed"), our mission is to spark human curiosity. We create a world of stories and knowledge, democratize the exchange of ideas and information, and empower collective expertise through our three products: Everand, Scribd, and Slideshare.
We support a culture where our employees can be real and be bold; where we debate and commit as we embrace plot twists; and where every employee is empowered to take action as we prioritize the customer.
We believe in balancing individual flexibility and community connections. Employees partner with their manager to choose the daily work-style that best suits their needs, with intentional in-person moments to build collaboration, culture, and connection. Occasional in-person attendance is required for all Scribd employees, regardless of location.
We hire for GRIT: the ability to set and achieve Goals, drive Results, bring Innovative ideas, and positively influence the Team.
The Content Foundations team builds the systems that power how content is uploaded, processed, and delivered across Scribd products. This includes everything from ingestion, metadata extraction, early quality controls, and the core artifacts that power search, recommendations, AI/ML systems, and the reading and listening experience.
Why this role is interesting: You'll be joining an experienced team working at the boundary between messy, real-world content and highly structured systems, where file formats vary and metadata inconsistencies become amplified at scale. Scribd operates a hybrid catalog of premium publisher content and user-generated uploads, spanning diverse formats, decade-old systems, and modern services evolving alongside them. Your contributions will directly impact downstream teams and ultimately our customers.
Current focus areas include:
Improvements to upload flow
Content quality and early-stage validation
OCR and content extraction for downstream ML/LLM use cases
Evolving content formats to support downstream AI workflows
Making content and metadata more accessible for downstream systems to consume
Contribute to core content systems: Design and implement features within ingestion pipelines, metadata services, and content processing workflows, with guidance from senior engineers and the EM on scope and trade-offs.
Build reliable, observable systems: Implement production-quality services that handle diverse file formats, malformed inputs, retries, asynchronous workflows, and edge cases.
Collaborate across teams: Partner with ML Engineering, Search & Discovery, the Content Library squad, and Product to build systems that balance performance, scalability, and user experience.
Improve content quality and discoverability: Work with ML and Discovery teams to enable improvements in metadata extraction, classification, and enrichment that power personalization and search.
Leverage AI-driven engineering practices: Use LLM-based systems and AI coding agents in your day-to-day work, and share your learnings with the team.
Grow your craft: Learn the domain deeply, take on increasingly ambitious problems, and develop your craft intentionally.
4+ years of professional software engineering experience, including exposure to production-scale systems.
Experience with backend services, data pipelines, or content-processing systems, depth in any one of these is enough.
Comfortable working with messy data and building systems resilient to real-world inputs.
Proficient in at least one of Ruby, Python, or Go, and willing to ramp up on the others (our stack includes all three).
Working familiarity with AWS (e.g., Lambda, SQS/SNS, S3) or similar cloud resources.
Comfortable working with relational databases (SQL).
Clear written and verbal communicator, able to collaborate with teammates and partner teams.
Collaborative and curious, eager to learn from peers and contribute back.
Experience with document formats (PDF, ebooks, markdown) and internals (parsing, OCR, transformation).
Familiarity with ML/AI systems (embeddings, chunking, retrieval pipelines).
If you’re interested in building the foundation for the next generation of content systems, powering discovery, personalization, AI, and richer experiences across Scribd products while learning from and contributing to a strong, collaborative team, we’d love to hear from you.
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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].
We carefully consider a wide range of factors when determining compensation, including but not limited to experience; job-related skill sets; relevant education or training; and other business and organizational needs. The salary range listed is for the level at which this job has been scoped. In the event that you are considered for a different level, a higher or lower pay range would apply. This position is also eligible for a competitive equity ownership, and a comprehensive and generous benefits package.
Are you currently based in a location where Scribd, Inc. can employ you?
Employees must have their primary residence in or near one of the following cities. This includes surrounding metro areas or locations within a typical commuting distance:
United States:
Atlanta | Austin | Boston | Dallas | Denver | Chicago | Houston | Jacksonville | Los Angeles | Miami | New York City | Phoenix | Portland | Sacramento | Salt Lake City | San Diego | San Francisco | Seattle | Washington D.C.
Canada:
Ottawa | Toronto | Vancouver
Mexico:
Mexico City
Benefits at Scribd, Inc.
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
Retirement matching and employee equity
Learning and development programs and professional growth opportunities
Wellness and home office stipends
Complimentary access to the Scribd, Inc. suite of products
Enterprise access to leading AI tools
Get to Know Scribd, Inc.
About Scribd, Inc.
Life at Scribd, Inc.
We want our interview process to be accessible to everyone. You can inform us of any reasonable adjustments we can make to better accommodate your needs by emailing [email protected] about the need for adjustments at any point in the interview process.
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Scribd, Inc. is committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We encourage people of all backgrounds to apply, and believe that a diversity of perspectives and experiences create a foundation for the best ideas. Come join us in building something meaningful.