
Software Engineer, Games - Web Platform
- Company name
- The New York Times (website)
- Annual base salary
- $110,000 — $130,000
- Location
On-site from
- Posted on SalaryPine
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.
About the Role, Mission or Department Overview
The New York Times is looking for a Web Platform Engineer with full-stack skills to join the Web Platform squad within the Games team. You'll join a foundational squad of engineers, designers, and product managers to help create incredible, immersive gaming experiences across The New York Time's suite of unique games. You'll be at the heart of the Games mission. You'll build the infrastructure and new puzzle capabilities that power our world-class content. Additionally, you'll maintain the internal editorial tools that allow our puzzle creators to excel.
Your work will expand and strengthen the technology behind our existing games while allowing the launch of new experiences. As a member of the platform group, you will bridge the gap between and creative vision, collaborating with partners in Product, Design, and Production. You'll be part of an engineering organization that values transparency, diversity, learning, and building a community of practice.
We build our web applications in React, using accessible, semantic HTML and SCSS to provide a high-quality, inclusive experience for all players. As a web platform engineer, you will focus on creating front-end architectures that power our games and editorial tools. You will also develop the performant APIs and endpoints in Go that serve as the backbone for our gaming ecosystem. We host our infrastructure primarily on AWS, using Redis for caching and Fastly for edge delivery.
This is a hybrid role based in our New York City headquarters.
Responsibilities:
- Develop the foundational web infrastructure and shared component libraries that help engineering teams to ship high-quality gaming experiences.
- Develop new puzzle capabilities and features for the internal editorial platform, empowering content creators to build immersive new games.
- Build performant, scalable APIs in Go to support the evolving needs of the Games ecosystem.
- Collaborate with partners in Product, Design, and Production to translate creative visions into technical solutions.
- Optimize web performance and accessibility across the Games suite, using edge computing and modern front-end best practices to provide a world-class player experience.
- Champion technical excellence by participating in code reviews, defining best practices, and contributing to the engineering community of practice.
- Demonstrate support and understanding of our value of journalistic independence and a commitment to our mission to seek the truth and help people understand the world.
- You will report to the Engineering Manager, Web Platform squad.
Basic Qualifications:
- 2+ years of professional software engineering experience building, deploying, and maintaining features within high-traffic, large-scale distributed systems.
- Proficiency in front-end fundamentals, including modern JavaScript (ES6+), semantic HTML, and CSS/SCSS, with a focus on web performance and accessibility.
- Professional experience with React (or a similar modern framework) for building complex, scalable web applications and internal tools.
- Experience building shared component libraries that multiple engineering teams consume to guide UI consistency and developer velocity across an organization, which they designed.
- Experience writing performant server-side code; while we use Go, experience with Java or Python is applicable.
- Experience with cloud infrastructure and content delivery, including AWS (or GCP), Redis, databases, containerized environments (Docker), and Edge computing/CDNs like Fastly.
- A collaborative, product-oriented mindset with experience working with partners like Product, Design, and Editorial teams to build new puzzle capabilities.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Prior engineering experience in the gaming industry with web-based games, puzzles, or interactive media.
- Demonstrated interest in mission-driven engineering and a desire to partner with an accomplished team to support the journalistic independence of The New York Times.
- Experience with CI/CD automation (e.g., GitHub Actions, Drone, or Terraform) and a "DevOps" approach to platform stability.
- Familiarity with managing and observability tools (e.g., Datadog, Sentry, or Grafana) to improve the player experience.
- Strong communication skills and a "product-first" mindset, with an obsession for end-user satisfaction and editorial efficiency.
- A growth-oriented mindset: You embrace technical challenges, learn from mistakes, and are eager to share your findings to help the whole team level up.
This role requires limited on-call hours. An on-call schedule will be determined when you join, taking into account team size and other variables.
#LI-Hybrid
REQ-019618
For roles in the U.S., dependent on your role, you may be eligible for variable pay, such as an annual bonus and restricted stock. Benefits may include medical, dental and vision benefits, Flexible Spending Accounts (F.S.A.s), a company-matching 401(k) plan, paid vacation, paid sick days, paid parental leave, tuition reimbursement and professional development programs.
For roles outside of the U.S., information on benefits will be provided during the interview process.
The New York Times Company is committed to being the world’s best source of independent, reliable and quality journalism. To do so, we embrace a diverse workforce that has a broad range of backgrounds and experiences across our ranks, at all levels of the organization. We encourage people from all backgrounds to apply.
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do 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 U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)’s Know Your Rights Poster is available here.
The New York Times Company will provide reasonable accommodations as required by applicable federal, state, and/or local laws. Individuals seeking an accommodation for the application or interview process should email reasonable.accommodations@nytimes.com. Emails sent for unrelated issues, such as following up on an application, will not receive a response.
The Company encourages those with criminal histories to apply, and will consider their applications in a manner consistent with applicable "Fair Chance" laws, including but not limited to the NYC Fair Chance Act, the Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act.
For information about The New York Times' privacy practices for job applicants click here.
Please beware of fraudulent job postings. Scammers may post fraudulent job opportunities, and they may even make fraudulent employment offers. This is done by bad actors to collect personal information and money from victims. All legitimate job opportunities from The New York Times will be accessible through The New York Times careers site. The New York Times will not ask job applicants for financial information or for payment, and will not refer you to a third party to do so. You should never send money to anyone who suggests they can provide employment with The New York Times.
If you see a fake or fraudulent job posting, or if you suspect you have received a fraudulent offer, you can report it to The New York Times at NYTapplicants@nytimes.com. You can also file a report with the Federal Trade Commission or your state attorney general.