Lead Software Engineer - Content Systems

Paramount • West Hollywood, CA

10d • $164,640 - $246,960 • Hybrid

About The Position

We are looking for a Lead Software Engineer to drive the technical direction of our Content Management System platform at Paramount Streaming. This is a hands-on individual contributor leadership role — you will write production code, own architectural decisions, and raise the technical bar across a polyglot platform that powers content delivery for Paramount+, Pluto TV, and CBS.com across multiple regions.

You will lead a team of 2–5 engineers through influence, not authority. No direct reports — maximum technical impact.

Requirements

• BS in Computer Science or related technical field, or equivalent useful experience.
• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with 2+ years in a technical lead or senior engineering role.
• Proven track record of leading complex technical initiatives to successful completion.
• Solid proficiency in Java (17+) and Spring Boot — building RESTful APIs, data access layers, and microservices.
• Production experience with React and Next.js (or equivalent modern frontend frameworks) using TypeScript.
• Experience with Python for services, scripting, or data pipelines.
• Solid knowledge of relational databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL) — schema design, query optimization, and migration tooling (e.g., Liquibase, Flyway).
• Experience with message brokers and event-driven architecture — Apache Kafka, GCP Pub/Sub, or similar.
• Experience with search infrastructure — Apache Solr, Elasticsearch, or equivalent.
• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (GCP or AWS) and containerized deployments (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Solid CI/CD experience — building and maintaining automated build, test, and deployment pipelines.
• Exemplary written and oral communication skills, with the ability to translate technical complexity for diverse audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to balance technical excellence with pragmatic delivery.

Nice To Haves

• Experience leading system migrations (monolith to microservices, legacy to modern stack).
• Knowledge of content management areas. Awareness of editorial workflows. Experience with media or streaming platforms.
• Experience with multi-region or multi-tenant architectures.
• Expertise in API design. This includes OpenAPI and Swagger. It also involves contract-first development and strategies for versioning.
• Infrastructure as code and deployment tooling (Helm, ArgoCD, Terraform).
• Observability and monitoring platforms (Grafana, Prometheus, Datadog, or similar).
• Experience with Redis (caching, RediSearch) and NoSQL data stores.
• OAuth2/OIDC authentication and authorization patterns.
• Experience with automated testing at scale — integration testing with TestContainers, E2E with Playwright or similar.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the established technical owner of one or more core CMS systems (API layer, integration services, search pipeline, or admin UI).
• Drive architectural decisions across the CMS platform, including API design, data modeling, event-driven integrations, and search infrastructure.
• Lead the design and implementation of scalable, robust services across a polyglot stack: Java/Spring Boot APIs, Next.js/React frontends, Python services, Kafka/PubSub messaging, and Solr search pipelines.
• Define and promote engineering best practices. This includes coding standards, design patterns, testing strategies, documentation, and AI-augmented workflows. Explain what team members do well and where they need supervision. Describe how we maintain code quality while increasing output.
• Identify, prioritize, and strategically reduce technical debt across the domain.
• Write and review RFCs, architecture decision records, and technical design documents for significant changes.
• Set the team's bar for AI-assisted development — including review standards for agent-generated PRs, prompt and context patterns (e.g., CLAUDE.md / agent instructions), and how we measure quality at higher delivery speed.
• Stay involved in coding. Write important production code. Run explorations to reduce risks in architecture decisions. Build prototypes. Help with high-impact features.
• Lead large projects and initiatives from conception through delivery — break down ambiguous, large-scale problems into actionable work.
• Coordinate rollouts and releases across multiple teams and services effectively.
• Partner with product managers, stakeholders, and other scrum teams to shape technical roadmaps that connect engineering work to business outcomes.
• Assess technical risk, make pragmatic trade-off decisions, and communicate them clearly.
• Own end-to-end delivery: from design through production observability and reliability.
• Fulfill SLAs by participating in on-call rotation, leading incident resolution, conducting RCAs, and driving preventive improvements.
• Set a high bar for quality through automated testing, peer review, CI/CD pipelines, and observability (structured logging, metrics, alerting).
• Ensure platform reliability across multi-region deployments (US, International, Pluto TV).
• Mentor and coach engineers through code reviews, design sessions, pairing, and architectural guidance — other engineers seek you out for this.
• Raise the technical bar for the entire team systematically, not just through individual contributions.
• Influence engineering culture: advocate for higher product quality, engineering efficiency, and continuous improvement.
• Help expand the team through interviewing candidates and onboarding new team members.
• Facilitate knowledge sharing across the team — tech talks, documentation, cross-training on system areas.
• Represent the engineering team in cross-functional planning with product, design, content operations, and SRE.
• Communicate technical concepts and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Work with other teams. Coordinate with teams that oversee nearby systems. This includes content ingestion, delivery, and editorial tools.

Benefits

• medical
• dental
• vision
• 401(k) plan
• life insurance coverage
• disability benefits
• tuition assistance program
• PTO
• bonus eligible

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Associate degree