Staff Software Engineer, iOS

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.

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 News 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.

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.

What Motivates You

• Architecting mission-critical consumer systems that sustain and amplify independent journalism worldwide.
• Setting technical vision and navigating ambiguous problem spaces to deliver long-term, high-impact business outcomes.
• Influencing platform roadmaps by leveraging bleeding-edge Apple technologies and shaping industry-standard AdTech patterns.
• Mentoring and sponsoring senior, mid-level, and early-career engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence.
• Driving organizational consensus across product, engineering, data science, and commercial partnerships.

How You'll Support the Mission

• 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).

The Skills and Experience You Bring

• 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.

Qualifications

• 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.

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:

The 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.