Software Engineer, Games - Web Platform

About The New York Times

The mission of The New York Times is to seek the truth and help people understand the world. Independent journalism is at the heart of all we do. We have a world-renowned newsroom reporting from nearly 160 countries and focus deeply on how readers experience our journalism, from print to audio to our world-class digital and app destinations. Our business strategy centers on making journalism so good that it's worth paying for.

About The Role

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 Times's unique suite of games. You'll be at the heart of the Games mission, building infrastructure and new puzzle capabilities that power world-class content. Additionally, you'll maintain internal editorial tools for puzzle creators.

Your work will expand and strengthen the technology behind existing games while enabling the launch of new experiences. As a member of the platform group, you will bridge the gap between technical 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 performant APIs and endpoints in Go that serve as the backbone for our gaming ecosystem. Our infrastructure is primarily hosted 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 foundational web infrastructure and shared component libraries to help engineering teams 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.
• 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.

Compensation and Benefits

The annual base pay range for this role is between: $110,000 - $130,000 USD. 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.

Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion

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.

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Key skills/competency

• Software Engineering
• Web Platform Development
• React Framework
• Go Programming Language
• AWS Cloud Services
• Front-end Architecture
• API Development
• Distributed Systems
• Web Performance Optimization
• Accessibility Standards