Staff Backend Engineer, Video Platform

Patreon is a media and community platform where over 300,000 creators give their biggest fans access to exclusive work and experiences. We offer creators a variety of ways to engage with their fans and build a lasting business including: paid memberships, free memberships, community chats, live video, and selling to fans directly with one-time purchases.

Ultimately our goal is simple: fund the creative class. And we're leaders in that space, with:

• $10 billion+ generated by creators since Patreon's inception

• 100 million+ free memberships for fans who may not be ready to pay just yet, and

• 25 million+ paid memberships on Patreon today.

We're continuing to invest in building the best platform for creators and are looking for a Staff Backend Engineer, Video Platform to help power reliable, high-quality live video experiences for creators and their communities.

This role can be based in San Francisco or New York, with three days per week in the office under our hybrid work model. Remote candidates may also be considered.

About the Team

The Backend Platform team builds the foundational systems and infrastructure that power Patreon's creator platform. We own core backend services, APIs, databases, and developer tooling that help product teams ship quickly and reliably at scale. Our scope also includes live video infrastructure, enabling creators to connect with their communities through reliable, high-quality streaming across web and mobile. We're growing the team to strengthen these foundations and support Patreon's next phase of growth.

About the Role

As Patreon's first dedicated video engineer, you’ll shape the live video platform that connects creators with their communities. You’ll combine strong backend engineering with deep streaming expertise to build reliable, high-quality live experiences at scale.

• Lead the architecture and delivery of live video systems spanning ingest, transcoding, packaging, delivery, and playback.

• Build scalable backend services and APIs that power live video experiences across web and mobile.

• Improve end-to-end streaming latency, video quality, and reliability across devices and network conditions.

• Drive video vendor evaluation, integration, and build-versus-buy decisions, balancing capabilities, cost, scale, and long-term flexibility.

• Establish observability, quality metrics, service-level objectives, and load testing practices to prepare for major creator live events.

• Own production reliability through incident response, debugging, capacity planning, and lasting improvements to system resilience.

• Partner with product, infrastructure, web, and mobile engineers to shape a multi-quarter video roadmap that balances creator needs with architectural health.

• Mentor engineers through hands-on collaboration and design reviews, growing video expertise within the team.

What you'll need

• Significant experience building and operating large-scale backend systems, with demonstrated technical leadership across teams.

• Experience architecting and delivering live video systems supporting large audiences, ideally 100,000+ concurrent viewers.

• Deep knowledge of live streaming technologies, including HLS, low-latency HLS, and WebRTC, and the trade-offs between latency, quality, reliability, and cost.

• Experience diagnosing and improving streaming behavior, including buffering, adaptive bitrate delivery, stream failures, and the impact of packet loss.

• Experience delivering broadcast and playback capabilities across web, iOS, and Android in partnership with client engineering teams.

• Strong foundations in distributed systems, APIs, data storage, caching, queues, and event-driven architectures.

• Experience evaluating and integrating video vendors, including understanding SDK limitations, quotas, scaling constraints, and pricing models.

• A strong operational mindset, with experience defining video quality metrics, running load tests, debugging production issues, and supporting on-call coverage for live systems and major events.

• Experience operating cloud-native systems using technologies such as AWS and Kubernetes.

• Proficiency in Python, Go, or a similar backend language, with a commitment to hands-on engineering.

• Ability to explain technical trade-offs clearly, guide cross-functional decisions, and translate ambiguous needs into a technical roadmap.

• Experience mentoring engineers and establishing technical standards that improve system quality and team effectiveness.

We hire talented and passionate people from different backgrounds because workplace diversity and inclusion is critical to our ability to serve creators worldwide. If you're excited about a role but your past experience doesn't match every bullet point outlined above, we strongly encourage you to apply anyway. If you're a creator at heart, are energized by our mission, and share our company values, we'd love to hear from you.

About Patreon

Patreon powers creators to do what they love and get paid by the people who love what they do. Our team is passionate about making this mission and our core values come to life every day in our work. Through this work, our Patronauts:

• Put Creators First | They're the reason we're here. When creators win, we win.

• Build with Craft | We sign our name to every deliverable, just like the creators we serve.

• Make it Happen | We don't quit. We learn and deliver.

• Win Together | We grow as individuals. We win as a team.

Patreon is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We provide employment opportunities without regard to age, race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, veteran status, or any other protected class. If you need a reasonable accommodation during the interview process, please let us know via email at [email protected]

Patreon offers a competitive benefits package including and not limited to salary, equity plans, healthcare, flexible time off, company holidays and recharge days, commuter benefits, lifestyle stipends, learning and development stipends, patronage, parental leave, and 401k plan with matching.

Patreon operates under a hybrid work model, where employees based in office locations are expected to come into the office three days per week, excluding sick time and paid leave. The goal of this policy is to be intentional about the in-person time we spend together to strengthen the feeling of community at Patreon. Candidates hired into remote-eligible roles are not expected to meet the same requirements.

At Patreon, we believe in fair and transparent pay. In compliance with New York and California pay transparency laws, we are sharing the expected salary range for this role.

The posted salary range is dependent on the location and the level. This range may encompass multiple levels within the role's job family. The final offer will be based on candidate's experience, skills, competencies, and geographic location, aligning with the appropriate job level within Patreon leveling framework. For remote employees located outside CA and NY, salary may vary based on location and local market conditions.

Patreon reserves the right to modify or update compensation and benefits at any time.