We’re on a mission to deliver riveting storytelling for all of America. At The Washington Post, you’ll help reinvent news. Our work is driven by a deep investigative spirit and enhanced by innovation to bring audiences closer to the stories that matter most.
About Our Team
The Washington Post is powered by the passion and talent of our people. It takes all of us to reinvent news. Beyond our award-winning News and Opinions teams, we work across many departments, including Brand & Events, Communications, Customer Care, Engineering & Product, Finance, Human Resources, Legal, Marketing & Advertising, Print Operations, and Sales.
Why This Role Matters
The Washington Post is looking for a Staff Software Engineer to serve as the technical authority and architectural anchor for our flagship mobile applications, with a dedicated focus on advancing our advertising technology (AdTech) platform. In this role, you will set the technical strategy, drive system architecture, and lead the long-term evolution of our mobile monetization infrastructure. You will work across product, platform, and executive stakeholders to deliver performant, privacy-first ad experiences to millions of global readers while raising the engineering bar across the organization.
What Motivates You
- Architecting mission-critical consumer systems that sustain and amplify independent journalism worldwide.
- Setting technical vision and navigating ambiguous problem spaces to deliver long-term, high-impact business outcomes.
- Influencing platform roadmaps by leveraging bleeding-edge Apple technologies and shaping industry-standard AdTech patterns.
- Mentoring and sponsoring senior, mid-level, and early-career engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence.
- Driving organizational consensus across product, engineering, data science, and commercial partnerships.
How You'll Support the Mission
- Define the overarching architectural roadmap for iOS monetization, bridging native ad rendering, programmatic auctions (RTB/header bidding), and low-latency measurement systems.
- Establish organization-wide technical standards for third-party SDK integration, sandboxing, and performance profiling to protect app stability, memory footprint, and battery life.
- Direct technical strategy around Apple platform privacy initiatives (ATT, Private Relay, SKAdNetwork), safeguarding user privacy while optimizing commercial viability.
- Partner with engineering leadership and product executives to translate high-level business goals into resilient, multi-quarter technical initiatives.
- Spearhead incident prevention, lead root-cause analyses for critical production outages, and continuously optimize core app vitals (cold start time, frame rates, and render latency).
The Skills and Experience You Bring
- Architect modular, extensible frameworks and shared libraries across multiple native iOS applications and platforms.
- Lead cross-functional alignment across backend, data, client, and product teams to establish robust API contracts and distributed system boundaries.
- Drive engineering-wide best practices for automated testing, CI/CD delivery pipelines, and comprehensive platform monitoring.
- Evaluate, benchmark, and audit vendor SDKs and internal systems for security risks, thread safety, and resource efficiency.
- Identify high-leverage opportunities to modernize codebases, deprecate legacy debt, and introduce next-generation development patterns.
Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with 6+ years specializing in native iOS development at enterprise or multi-million MAU scale.
- Proven track record as an architectural lead or technical anchor guiding multi-engineer initiatives from conception to long-term maintenance.
- Deep mastery of modern Swift, runtime dynamics, memory management, concurrency, and Apple core frameworks.
- Deep domain expertise in mobile AdTech, including client-side header bidding, SSP/DSP ecosystems, server-driven UI for native ads, and platforms like Google Ad Manager and Nimbus.
- Extensive experience navigating platform privacy frameworks, telemetry pipelines, and mobile telemetry/profiling tools (Instruments, LLDB, metric collection).
- Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers, influence executive roadmaps, and communicate complex architectural tradeoffs to non-technical stakeholders.
Wherever you are in your life or career, The Washington Post offers comprehensive and inclusive benefits for every step of your journey:
Competitive medical, dental and vision coverage
Company-paid pension and 401(k) match
Three weeks of vacation and up to three weeks of paid sick leave
Nine paid holidays and two personal days
20 weeks paid parental leave for any new parent
Robust mental health resources
Backup care and caregiver concierge services
Gender affirming services
Pet insurance
Free Post digital subscription
Leadership and career development programs
Benefits may vary based on the job, full-time or part-time schedule, location, and collectively bargained status.
The salary range for this position is:
$131,500 - $219,100 AnnualThe actual salary within this range will depend on individual skills, experience, and qualifications as they relate to specific job requirements. This position may be eligible for a bonus or incentive program, and a member of the Talent Acquisition team will discuss bonus payment terms and conditions during the interview process.
Learn more about The Post at careers.washingtonpost.com.
Skills Required
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent experience
- 3+ years of experience with the iOS SDK
- Strong understanding of computer science fundamentals, operating systems, algorithms, data structures, and design principles
- Excellent verbal and written communication and collaboration skills
- Strong problem-solving skills
- Experience working with or prototyping with Apple SDKs
- Experience with Swift
- Experience supporting advertising implementations such as Google Ad Manager and Nimbus
- Experience leveraging AI tooling in the development process
- Experience with version control principles, preferably Git and pull requests
- Familiarity with Agile and Scrum methodologies
- Experience with testing and quality assurance practices, including unit testing and code documentation
- Prior experience in a similar role
The Washington Post Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about The Washington Post and has not been reviewed or approved by The Washington Post.
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Healthcare Strength — Healthcare coverage is described as comprehensive, with medical, dental, and vision plans, robust mental‑health resources, and for Guild‑covered roles, employer‑paid single coverage plus an HRA for certain travel needs. Feedback suggests these features make core health benefits a reliable anchor even as specifics can vary by role.
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Parental & Family Support — Paid parental leave is highlighted at a generous level for all new parents, alongside backup care, caregiver concierge, and gender‑affirming services in some postings. These family‑forward supports stand out within the broader package.
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Pay Growth & Progression — Recent union agreements secured across‑the‑board raises and significantly higher salary floors for lower‑paid cohorts, with automatic increases beginning in 2024. Feedback suggests these gains improved satisfaction at the lower end even as overall pay views remain varied.
The Washington Post Insights
What We Do
The Washington Post is an award-winning news leader whose mission is to connect, inform, and enlighten local, national and global readers with trustworthy reporting, in-depth analysis and engaging opinions. The Post is as much a tech company as it is a media company, combining world-class journalism with the latest technology and tools so readers can interact with The Post anytime, anywhere. Our approach is always the same– shape ideas, redefine speed, take ownership and lead. Every employee, every project, every day.
Why Work With Us
Rapidly growing, this team is committed to creating excellent experiences and products worthy of our tradition and our future. Our dedication to innovation, excellence and integrity are at the core of what we do, and why our employees are proud to call The Post their home.
