Staff Software Engineer, iOS

The Washington Post•Washington, DC

1d•$131,500 - $219,100•Onsite

About The Position

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.

Requirements

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.
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.

Responsibilities

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).