Senior Backend Engineer, Video Platform Integration

We’re continuing to invest in building the best platform for creators and are looking for a Senior Backend Engineer, Video Platform Integration to build scalable backend systems and reliable 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.

You’ll combine strong backend engineering skills with practical video experience to help build Patreon’s live video capabilities. Our video partners handle much of the core media processing and delivery. Your work will focus on the backend services, vendor integrations, and operational systems that turn those capabilities into reliable experiences for creators.

This role offers opportunities to take on increasing technical ownership, make architectural decisions, and grow your impact across the team.

About Patreon

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.

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, where we partner with video providers to deliver high-quality streaming experiences across web and mobile.

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.
• 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.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate distributed backend services, APIs, and event-driven workflows supporting video and broader platform capabilities.
• Integrate video vendor APIs and SDKs into Patreon’s systems, including stream setup, session lifecycle, recording workflows, and status updates.
• Build resilient integrations that handle asynchronous events, retries, rate limits, vendor outages, and recovery.
• Improve performance, scalability, and reliability across services, databases, caching layers, and third-party dependencies.
• Partner with web, mobile, product, and infrastructure teams to deliver reliable broadcast and playback experiences.
• Develop monitoring, dashboards, alerts, and automated tests to identify streaming issues and understand their impact on creators and viewers.
• Investigate production issues across Patreon’s services and video providers, collaborating with vendors to resolve problems and prevent recurrence.
• Contribute to technical designs, vendor evaluations, and build-versus-buy decisions that balance delivery speed, cost, and maintainability.
• Participate in on-call, code reviews, and design discussions, sharing knowledge and strengthening engineering practices.
• Building observability for video quality, session health, or third-party service reliability.

Requirements

• Significant experience building and operating production backend systems, typically five or more years or equivalent demonstrated expertise.
• Strong foundations in distributed systems, API design, asynchronous processing, queues, and event-driven architectures.
• Proficiency in a backend language such as Python, Go, Java, or a similar language.
• Experience with relational or NoSQL databases, data modeling, caching, and performance optimization.
• Practical experience integrating video or live streaming providers into production applications, including stream creation, broadcast setup, playback, or recording workflows.
• Experience working with video vendor APIs, SDKs, and webhooks to manage stream lifecycle, track status changes, and handle failures.
• A working understanding of video concepts such as latency, buffering, adaptive bitrate streaming, and protocols such as HLS or WebRTC.
• Ability to troubleshoot video issues across backend services, vendor platforms, and web or mobile clients using logs, metrics, and vendor diagnostic tools.
• Experience building resilient third-party integrations that account for authentication, rate limits, retries, duplicate or out-of-order events, and service interruptions.
• An ownership mindset, with experience testing, monitoring, debugging, and supporting systems in production.
• Ability to work through ambiguous problems, explain technical trade-offs, and collaborate across teams.
• Curiosity about video systems and a desire to expand your technical scope through hands-on delivery and learning.
• Evaluating vendor capabilities, usage limits, and costs.

Preferred

• Integrating managed video platforms such as Amazon IVS, Mux, Cloudflare Stream, or similar providers.
• Supporting live video experiences across web or mobile.

Pay

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.

Benefits

• 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.

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.

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