Software Engineer - Live

The mission of The New York Times is to seek the truth and help people understand the world. That means independent journalism is at the heart of all we do as a company. It’s why we have a world-renowned newsroom that sends journalists to report on the ground from nearly 160 countries. It’s why we focus deeply on how our readers will experience our journalism, from print to audio to a world-class digital and app destination. And it’s why our business strategy centers on making journalism so good that it’s worth paying for. 

Note for US based roles: Any offer of employment is contingent on providing proof of Covid-19 vaccination prior to your start date, subject to approved medical and/or religious exemptions, in accordance with applicable law.

Job Description

The Live team at The New York Times is looking for a collaborative full-stack software engineer with empathy for the news environment who are excited about iterating alongside the news and directly supporting the mission of The Times. 

In this role, you will report to the Engineering Manager on the Live team and join a cross-functional team of engineers, designers, and product managers to build a more dynamic news report across our surfaces that makes us the go-to news destination during breaking news and brings our audience back again and again. Ideal candidates are comfortable with (or curious about) traversing the technical stack and the occasional unfamiliar system to produce high-quality, innovative features and tools which is an exhilarating and impactful challenge, while being a part of an engineering organization that values transparency and openness, diversity, learning, community, and continuous improvement.

About the team

We partner with the newsroom to elevate our major news formats, build products that guide readers through our report, and develop tools that power our coverage of the major news of the day. Our team:

• Launches prototypes quickly to run news-driven experiments, and scales systems and products over time.

• Works at the speed of the news, shipping work on cycles sometimes measured in hours, rather than days or weeks, to respond to breaking news opportunities.

• Builds tools both for our readers and for internal users (i.e., editors), and thinks about holistic systems to connect them.

• Thinks strategically about how to use technology to respond to news more efficiently.

• Ensures overall application architecture suitably fits the business problem and quality standards, for now, and for the future.

Our tech stack:

The core technologies used on our team include React, JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js, Express, GraphQL and Firestore.

In this role, you will:

• Work collaboratively with design and product to refine and develop new features for editors internally and readers externally.

• Prototype, keeping scalability at the core of all development, and respond nimbly on occasional news-related deadlines.

• Have a voice in the direction of our products.

• Have a high degree of empathy for, or interest in gaining empathy for, the news environment, including editorial, standards, and workflow considerations.

• Work with all parts of the stack, build systems in modern technologies, write high-quality code with best practices in mind and learn new skills.

• Provide production support by participating in on-call rotations for the tools we build.

• Contribute to iteration on internal team processes and norms.

Required Experience:

• 2+ years developing software using modern JavaScript frameworks on both the server and client.

• Full-stack technical background, with one area of specialty.

• Experience in one or more frontend frameworks (React, Angular, Vue, Svelte).

• Experience in frontend web fundamentals (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, web performance, accessibility).

• Familiarity with one or more backend languages and frameworks (Node.js/Express, Ruby/Rails, Python/Django).

• Familiarity with one or more persistence technologies (SQL, NoSQL, Firebase).

• Familiarity with client-server communication mechanisms.

Nice to Have Experience:

• Journalism or media background is a bonus.

• Experience working in an agile and swift environment.

• Experience with public cloud platform services such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

• Familiarity with containers and container orchestration systems like Kubernetes, Docker.

• Familiarity with CI/CD techniques and tooling (e.g. Jenkins, drone), automated testing and deployments, and other DevOps practices.

• Familiarity with JavaScript build tooling and frameworks.

• Understanding of caching and content delivery.

This role may require limited on-call hours. An on-call schedule will be determined when you join, taking into account team size and other variables.

Culture and Benefits

• You will help to power, distribute, and expand what is possible for our award-winning journalism. We've won more Pulitzer Prizes than any other organization (including three in 2018).

• We believe diversity fuels innovation and creativity, and we have a variety of employee groups dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace.

• We are a New York-based engineering organization that embraces a remote-friendly workplace and includes engineers around the world.

• We offer great health, dental, vision and life insurance, and generous 401(k) matches.

• We offer a generous parental leave policy.

• We are committed to career development and ongoing learning and provide employees $8,000 annually for tuition reimbursement. We also have a formal mentoring program.

• We run a Maker Week event twice a year, where Design, Product, Project, Marketing and Technology come together to work on compelling, creative, cross-functional projects.

To learn more about our work and NYT’s broader technology organization check out our Open blog and follow @nytopen on Twitter to see what we’re up to.

The annual base pay range for this role is between $104,000.00 and $130,000.00. 

The New York Times is committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce, one that reflects the varied global community we serve. Our journalism and the products we build in the service of that journalism greatly benefit from a range of perspectives, which can only come from diversity of all types, across our ranks, at all levels of the organization. Achieving true diversity and inclusion is the right thing to do. It is also the smart thing for our business. So we strongly encourage women, veterans, people with disabilities, people of color and gender nonconforming candidates to apply.

The New York Times Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of an individual's sex, age, race, color, creed, national origin, alienage, religion, marital status, pregnancy, sexual orientation or affectional preference, gender identity and expression, disability, genetic trait or predisposition, carrier status, citizenship, veteran or military status and other personal characteristics protected by law. All applications will receive consideration for employment without regard to legally protected characteristics. The New York Times Company will provide reasonable accommodations as required by applicable federal, state, and/or local laws, and will consider qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable "Fair Chance" laws.