Cloud Senior Software Engineer

The Washington Post•Washington, DC

19h•Onsite

About The Position

The Washington Post is on a mission to deliver riveting storytelling for all of America and reinvent news, driven by a deep investigative spirit and enhanced by innovation. Arc XP, a division of The Washington Post, is a cloud-based digital experience platform that empowers enterprise companies, retail brands, and media and entertainment organizations to create and distribute content, drive digital commerce, and deliver compelling multichannel experiences. Arc XP has facilitated the digital transformation of customers worldwide, currently serving over 1,900 sites in more than 25 countries, reaching nearly 2 billion unique visitors monthly. The Arc platform fully leverages AWS and is built upon a microservices architecture. Software teams embrace DevOps principles, lightweight processes, and innovate rapidly, deploying new features and products daily as Software as a Service. This role is for a Senior Software Engineer to join the Delivery & Rendering engineering team. In this position, you will design, build, and operate scalable platform services that power Arc XP’s delivery and infrastructure ecosystem, working across backend systems, identity integrations, and AWS-based infrastructure. As a Senior Engineer, you will take ownership of services and features end-to-end, contribute to architectural decisions, and help improve engineering practices through collaboration and mentorship. The ideal candidate is passionate about building scalable, reliable systems, continuously improving technical skills, takes ownership, is accountable for high-quality solutions, enjoys solving complex problems, balances speed with long-term maintainability, collaborates effectively, contributes to a positive, inclusive team environment, stays current with modern technologies, and applies them thoughtfully to real-world challenges.

Requirements

BA/BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
5+ years of experience building scalable, customer-facing applications.
Proficiency in server-side programming languages (Python, Node.js preferred; Go or Java acceptable).
Experience with AWS services such as Lambda, ECS, Step Functions, DynamoDB, and CloudFormation.
Familiarity with microservices and event-driven architectures.
Experience with frontend technologies such as React, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Understanding of authentication and identity systems (e.g., OAuth, SSO, MFA).
Experience with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices.
Strong problem-solving and debugging skills in distributed systems.

Nice To Haves

Experience building or supporting SaaS platforms at scale.
Familiarity with CDN technologies such as Akamai or CloudFront.
Experience with API gateways and proxy systems (e.g., NGINX).
Experience with infrastructure-as-code and automation tools.
Knowledge of monitoring, observability, and performance tuning in cloud environments.
Exposure to cost optimization and efficiency improvements in AWS environments.

Responsibilities

Design, develop, and maintain secure, scalable backend services supporting the Arc platform.
Build solutions using AWS technologies such as Lambda, ECS, Step Functions, DynamoDB, and CloudFormation.
Own services end-to-end, including development, deployment, monitoring, and operational support.
Implement CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and deployment best practices.
Monitor production systems, troubleshoot issues, and improve system reliability, performance, and cost efficiency.
Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code aligned with team standards.
Participate in architectural discussions and contribute to evolving system design and patterns.
Provide guidance to junior and mid-level engineers through code reviews and knowledge sharing.
Help break down work into manageable tasks and contribute to sprint planning and estimation.
Promote best practices in coding, testing, and system design within the team.
Support onboarding of new engineers and contribute to a strong team culture.
Actively participate in agile ceremonies including sprint planning, standups, retrospectives, and demos.
Collaborate with product managers and cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality solutions.
Communicate technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Identify opportunities to improve tooling, processes, and system efficiency.
Contribute to reducing technical debt and improving platform reliability and performance.