Senior Software Engineer
Join the future of news
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 Newsroom 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
We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help shape the future of newsletter and content delivery at The Washington Post. This role will own and expand engineering capabilities across our Iterable platform and newsroom-facing tools built around Arc.
With the initial migration from Carta to Iterable largely complete, the next phase is about going beyond platform replacement. This engineer will help build sophisticated audience journeys, reusable templates and content systems, data integrations, personalization capabilities, and workflows that allow the newsroom to reach readers in more targeted and effective ways.
The Content Delivery team is small and highly collaborative, supporting critical publishing surfaces and tools used across the newsroom. This role will provide the senior technical ownership and capacity needed to scale those systems, reduce reliance on one-off solutions, and turn new editorial and audience opportunities into durable products.
What Motivates You
You are excited by the opportunity to build platforms that help journalism reach the right audiences.
You enjoy taking ownership of complex systems and moving work from initial problem definition through production delivery.
You care about creating reusable systems rather than accumulating one-off templates and workflows.
You are comfortable working closely with editorial, product, Marketing, Subscriptions, and other engineering teams.
You can translate ambiguous business or editorial needs into practical and scalable technical solutions.
You care about reliability, maintainability, testing, observability, and the long-term health of the systems you own.
You are interested in audience personalization, campaign automation, content distribution, and data-driven product development.
You communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical partners and can explain trade-offs without unnecessary complexity.
You actively share knowledge through documentation, code review, pairing, and mentorship.
You use AI-assisted development tools to accelerate implementation and exploration while maintaining strong engineering judgment and accountability.
How You'll Support the Mission
Lead the development and evolution of newsletter and content-delivery capabilities within Iterable.
Design and build sophisticated campaigns, journeys, personalization features, and audience-targeting workflows.
Develop and maintain reusable newsletter templates and Handlebars-based content components that reduce duplication and support consistent rendering.
Build and support integrations between Iterable, Arc, newsroom systems, data feeds, content APIs, and backend services.
Contribute to newsroom-facing Arc extensions and tools used to create, curate, preview, validate, and distribute content.
Partner with editorial, product, Marketing, Subscriptions, and engineering teams to define requirements, shape MVPs, and identify scalable solutions.
Lead features and larger initiatives independently, from technical design and implementation through rollout and ongoing support.
Evaluate existing systems and workflows, identify areas of operational or technical risk, and recommend improvements.
Write modular, testable, reusable, and well-documented code across front-end and backend systems.
Improve platform reliability through automated testing, observability, alerting, documentation, and thoughtful production support practices.
Review pull requests promptly and provide constructive technical guidance that helps unblock and develop other engineers.
Make pragmatic decisions about scope, technical debt, and delivery timelines while clearly communicating risks and trade-offs.
Use AI-assisted development tools responsibly to accelerate prototyping, implementation, testing, documentation, and investigation.
Share platform knowledge across the team to reduce single points of failure and strengthen long-term ownership.
Mentor engineers and contribute to team practices, technical standards, hiring, and engineering culture.
The Skills and Experience You Bring
Minimum Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
At least eight years of relevant technical experience, including six or more years in software development.
Strong experience building production applications with JavaScript or TypeScript.
Strong experience with React or a similar component-based front-end framework.
Experience designing and integrating REST or JSON APIs and working with structured content and data.
Experience developing backend services using Node.js or another server-side technology.
Ability to independently lead complex features or engineering initiatives from definition through delivery.
Experience producing maintainable, reusable, tested, and well-documented code.
Strong analytical, debugging, and problem-solving skills.
Experience with automated testing, quality assurance, monitoring, and production support.
Ability to evaluate technical trade-offs involving scalability, reliability, maintainability, and delivery speed.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including experience collaborating with non-technical stakeholders.
Experience mentoring engineers, reviewing code, and sharing technical knowledge.
Preferred Qualifications
Hands-on experience with Iterable or another enterprise marketing automation or customer engagement platform.
Experience developing dynamic templates using Handlebars or a similar templating language.
Experience building campaign journeys, audience segmentation, personalization, or event-driven messaging workflows.
Experience with content management systems, publishing platforms, newsroom tools, or media products.
Experience building extensions or integrations for Arc XP or another enterprise publishing platform.
Experience with Amazon Web Services, including services such as Lambda, S3, CloudWatch, EventBridge, Step Functions, or API Gateway.
Experience with Node.js frameworks such as NestJS.
Experience with Spring Boot, Kotlin, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, or similar backend technologies.
Experience building data feeds and integrations across content, customer, analytics, or marketing systems.
Experience with observability tools such as CloudWatch, Datadog, Splunk, or similar platforms.
Experience working on high-volume email, notification, or content-distribution systems.
Experience using AI-assisted development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Claude, Cursor, Kiro, or similar tools as part of an engineering workflow.
Collaboration makes us stronger. That’s why our offices are designed with open layouts, modern technology, and easy access to transportation. With certain exceptions for newsgathering and business travel, we work on-site five days a week.
Compensation and Benefits
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:
$119,700 - $199,300 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.
Your story awaits. Apply today!
Learn more about The Post at careers.washingtonpost.com.