Staff Software Engineer, SEO & Content Discovery

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

 

The Washington Post is hiring a Staff Engineer to lead the engineering execution of our SEO and content discovery strategy in close collaboration with editorial, SEO leadership, product, and analytics. As traditional search and social referral patterns shift and AI-powered interfaces become dominant content discovery surfaces, this role is critical to ensuring our journalism remains accessible, performant, and relevant across all major platforms.

You will build and evolve the systems—front-end architectures, structured data layers, discovery infrastructure, and performance tooling—that power content visibility across search engines, generative AI models, internal recirculation systems, and third-party aggregators. This is a key engineering role on the front lines of reimagining how audiences find news in the AI era.

What Motivates You

• You care deeply about building web experiences that scale, perform, and surface high-quality content in the right context.

• You're excited to partner with SEO and content discovery leaders to turn strategy into durable engineering solutions.

• You enjoy working across technical and non-technical teams to design systems that balance editorial priorities with platform needs.

• You’re curious about how AI, LLMs, and answer engines are transforming discovery—and want to help lead the technical response.

• You believe in the mission of journalism and want to help ensure it stays discoverable and relevant in a fragmented digital ecosystem.

How You'll Support The Mission

• Build and maintain high-performance front-end web applications optimized for SEO, Core Web Vitals, accessibility, and structured metadata.

• Translate SEO and content discovery strategy into scalable engineering solutions including rendering logic, metadata frameworks, routing structures, and platform enhancements.
  Implement and maintain structured data systems (e.g., Schema.org, JSON-LD) to improve visibility in traditional search and AI discovery surfaces.

• Drive rendering strategies (SSR, SSG, ISR) using frameworks like Next.js, Astro, or equivalent—prioritizing crawlability and speed.

• Own deployment and operational reliability for SEO-critical systems in a cloud infrastructure environment (e.g., AWS).

• Build tooling and internal dashboards to monitor SEO health, crawl/indexing issues, and LLM inclusion performance.

• Contribute to the long-term technical roadmap for Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Large Model Optimization (LMO).

• Work cross-functionally with editorial engineering, analytics, infrastructure, and audience teams to align technical implementation with strategic content goals.

The Skills and Experience You Bring

• 7+ years of experience in software engineering with a focus on front-end systems, web architecture, or performance optimization for content platforms.
  Strong proficiency with JavaScript, React, and modern web frameworks like Next.js, Astro, or similar.

• Deep understanding of how rendering strategies (CSR, SSR, SSG) and metadata systems affect SEO and discoverability.

• Hands-on experience deploying and scaling applications in a cloud environment preferably AWS with CI/CD and observability best practices.
  Familiarity with structured data standards, sitemap strategies, canonicalization, and crawlability optimization at scale.

• Experience developing or supporting dashboards, logs, and alerting systems for visibility monitoring and issue detection.

• A plus: Familiarity with tools like Google Search Console, Botify, Screaming Frog, or performance profiling tools.

• Bonus: Exposure to semantic search, vector embeddings, or LLM integration for content systems.

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:

$131,500 - $219,100 Annual

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.

Your story awaits. Apply today!

Learn more about The Post at careers.washingtonpost.com.