The job, in the employer's words
OVERVIEW
A thriving, mission-driven multimedia organization, NPR produces award-winning news, information, and music programming in partnership with hundreds of independent public radio stations across the nation. The NPR audience values information, creativity, curiosity, and social responsibility – and our employees do too. We are innovators and leaders in diverse fields, from journalism and digital media to IT and development. Every day, our employees and member stations touch the lives of millions worldwide.
Across our organization, we’re building a workplace where collaboration is essential, diverse voices are heard, and inclusion is the key to our success. We are committed to doing the right thing in our journalism and in every role at NPR. This means that integrity, adherence to our ethical standards, and compliance with legal obligations are fundamental responsibilities for every employee at NPR.
Intro to Position
A Software Architect exemplifies technical expertise and excellence at NPR. Working alongside engineering leadership and cross-functional discipline teams, you will guide strategic technology decisions, design scalable solutions, and build robust pipelines, services, and tools that support NPR and our Member Station Network.
In this role, you will lead technology strategy across our most complex engineering initiatives—those impacting multiple product lines, distributed systems, and mobile platforms simultaneously. Responsible for end-to-end architecture from platform services to client applications and downstream data pipelines, you will balance system performance, developer velocity, data privacy, and cost-efficiency to deliver exceptional public media experiences at scale.
This is a union-represented role covered under the terms of a collective bargaining agreement with NABET-CWA DMU.
Responsibilities
Architectural Strategy & System Design
- Architect Unified Mobile & Cross-Platform Systems: Define and implement shared architectural patterns and modular design systems across native iOS and Android codebases and cross-platform integrations to maximize code reuse and development velocity.
- Design Scalable Personalization & Delivery Pipelines: Lead platform-to-client architecture for personalized content delivery, supporting high-traffic, localized media experiences across owned digital properties and member station networks.
- Drive Technology Standards & Evaluation: Conduct technical evaluations for custom builds versus vendor solutions; introduce modern technologies and establish architectural standards across divisions.
Cross-Team Collaboration & Governance
- Lead Multi-Team Engineering Initiatives: Provide technical oversight and direction across cross-divisional product roadmaps, project proposals, and OKR planning cycles for multi-team initiatives.
- Establish Quality & Code Governance: Conduct architectural proposals and code reviews, providing substantive feedback on system designs, security protocols, workflows, and peer-written software.
- Integrate Compliance & Cost Controls: Architect solutions with explicit focus on privacy compliance (GDPR/CPRA), security standards, CDN caching strategies, and cloud cost optimization frameworks.
Operational Excellence & Mentorship
- Support Deployment & Operational Resilience: Participate in automated deployments across QA, UAT, and production environments; join the developer on-call rotation to diagnose and resolve critical incidents.
- Contribute High-Quality Code: Author documented, resilient code and reusable core libraries aligned with department standards and sprint commitments.
- Foster Technical Mentorship & Team Growth: Assist in onboarding, training, and interviewing software engineering staff, advocating for efficient agile processes and inclusive team practices.
The above duties and responsibilities are not an exhaustive list of required responsibilities, duties and skills. Other duties may be assigned, and this job description can be modified at any time.
Minimum Qualifications
- 7+ years of progressive software engineering experience, including demonstrated success designing and leading technical architecture for complex, multi-team platform environments.
- Deep technical proficiency in native mobile architecture (iOS and Android) using languages such as Swift, Kotlin, Java, or Objective-C.
- Proven track record designing high-traffic, resilient distributed systems, RESTful/GraphQL APIs, and client-server integration patterns.
- Practical experience architecting media playback, streaming protocols, CDN configurations, and cloud infrastructure ecosystems (e.g., AWS or GCP).
- Hands-on experience integrating data privacy and compliance standards (GDPR, CPRA) alongside cloud cost optimization frameworks in high-availability environments.
- Demonstrated experience with modern version control systems (Git), continuous integration pipelines, and automated testing frameworks.
Preferred Qualifications
- Polyglot Backend Systems: Familiarity with modern backend languages such as Go or PHP in event-driven or microservice architectures.
- Advanced Caching & Open Source: Experience optimizing edge media caches, working with relational databases/SQL, or contributing to open-source software initiatives.
Required Skills/Competencies
- Cross-Functional Technical Governance: Ability to translate complex business and product requirements into clear, practical architectural designs accepted across multiple engineering teams.
- Technical Mentorship & Code Quality Advocacy: Strong commitment to promoting engineering best practices, conducting empathetic code reviews, and elevating overall code quality.
- Operational Resilience & Diagnostic Vision: Ability to systematically isolate, diagnose, and resolve production incidents under high-urgency conditions during on-call rotation.
- Structured Stakeholder Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills to present software architecture proposals, trade-offs, and technical roadmaps to non-technical stakeholders.
- Mission-Driven Innovation: Passion for leveraging modern technology to advance public media, accessibility, and audience engagement.
Education Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field, OR equivalent practical work experience demonstrating equivalent technical architecture capability.
Work Location & Requirements
- NPR Remote-Permitted: This is a remote-permitted role. This role is based out of our Washington, D.C. office, but the employee may choose to work on a remote basis from a location that NPR approves. You will have the option of working (a) remotely from a location of your choosing within the United States that is supported by NPR; (b) on-site at an NPR facility, based on the availability of desks and approval from NPR; or (c) a combination of both. Regardless of where you choose to work from, you may be expected to travel to other locations from time to time to perform the duties of your position.
Job Type
- This is a full-time, exempt position.
Compensation
Salary Range: The U.S.-based anticipated salary range for this opportunity is $184,758.33 - $205,933.12 plus benefits. The range displayed reflects the minimum and maximum salaries NPR expects to provide for new hires for the position across all US locations.
NPR Benefits: NPR provides comprehensive benefits for employees and dependents. Regular, full-time employees scheduled to work 30 hours or more per week are eligible to enroll in NPR’s benefits options. Benefits include access to health and wellness, paid time off, and financial well-being. Plan options include medical, dental, vision, life/ accidental death and dismemberment, long-term disability, short-term disability, and voluntary retirement savings to all eligible NPR employees.
Does this sound like you? If so, we want to hear from you.
#LI-REMOTE
NPR is an Equal Opportunity Employer. NPR is committed to being an inclusive workplace that welcomes diverse and unique perspectives, all working toward the same goal – to create a more informed public. Qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ethnicity, national origin, ancestry, age, religion, religious belief, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions, lactation, and reproductive health decisions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, transgender status, gender non-conforming status, intersex status, sexual stereotypes, nationality, citizenship status, personal appearance, marital status, family status, family responsibilities, military status, veteran status, mental and physical disability, medical condition, genetic information, genetic characteristics of yourself or a family member, political views and affiliation, unemployment status, protective order status, status as a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking, or any other basis prohibited under applicable law.
If you are a person with a disability needing assistance with the application process, please reach out to employeerelations@npr.org.
You may read NPR’s privacy policy to learn about how NPR may handle information you submit with any application.
Want more NPR? Explore the stories behind the stories on our NPR Extra blog. Get social with NPR Extra on Facebook and Instagram. Find more career opportunities at NPR.org/careers.
Benefits mentioned
- Salary Range: The U.S.-based anticipated salary range for this opportunity is $184,758.33 - $205,933.12 plus benefits. The range displayed reflects the minimum and maximum salaries NPR expects to provide for new hires for the position across all US locations.
- NPR Benefits: NPR provides comprehensive benefits for employees and dependents. Regular, full-time employees scheduled to work 30 hours or more per week are eligible to enroll in NPR’s benefits options. Benefits include access to health and wellness, paid time off, and financial well-being. Plan options include medical, dental, vision, life/ accidental death and dismemberment, long-term disability, short-term disability, and voluntary retirement savings to all eligible NPR employees.
Requirements mentioned
- 7+ years of progressive software engineering experience, including demonstrated success designing and leading technical architecture for complex, multi-team platform environments.
- Deep technical proficiency in native mobile architecture (iOS and Android) using languages such as Swift, Kotlin, Java, or Objective-C.
- Proven track record designing high-traffic, resilient distributed systems, RESTful/GraphQL APIs, and client-server integration patterns.
- Practical experience architecting media playback, streaming protocols, CDN configurations, and cloud infrastructure ecosystems (e.g., AWS or GCP).
- Hands-on experience integrating data privacy and compliance standards (GDPR, CPRA) alongside cloud cost optimization frameworks in high-availability environments.
- Demonstrated experience with modern version control systems (Git), continuous integration pipelines, and automated testing frameworks.
- Polyglot Backend Systems: Familiarity with modern backend languages such as Go or PHP in event-driven or microservice architectures.
- Advanced Caching & Open Source: Experience optimizing edge media caches, working with relational databases/SQL, or contributing to open-source software initiatives.
- Cross-Functional Technical Governance: Ability to translate complex business and product requirements into clear, practical architectural designs accepted across multiple engineering teams.
- Technical Mentorship & Code Quality Advocacy: Strong commitment to promoting engineering best practices, conducting empathetic code reviews, and elevating overall code quality.
- Operational Resilience & Diagnostic Vision: Ability to systematically isolate, diagnose, and resolve production incidents under high-urgency conditions during on-call rotation.
- Structured Stakeholder Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills to present software architecture proposals, trade-offs, and technical roadmaps to non-technical stakeholders.
- Mission-Driven Innovation: Passion for leveraging modern technology to advance public media, accessibility, and audience engagement.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related field, OR equivalent practical work experience demonstrating equivalent technical architecture capability.
- NPR Remote-Permitted: This is a remote-permitted role. This role is based out of our Washington, D.C. office, but the employee may choose to work on a remote basis from a location that NPR approves. You will have the option of working (a) remotely from a location of your choosing within the United States that is supported by NPR; (b) on-site at an NPR facility, based on the availability of desks and approval from NPR; or (c) a combination of both. Regardless of where you choose to work from, you may be expected to travel to other locations from time to time to perform the duties of your position.
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