Manager, Software Engineering

Cast & Crew

About The Position

At Cast & Crew, we’ve empowered creativity and supported the global entertainment industry for decades. Together with our family of brands - Backstage, CAPS, Checks & Balances, Final Draft, Media Services, Sargent-Disc, and The TEAM Companies – we operate as a combined entertainment technology and services provider offering industry standard screenwriting accounting software, digital payroll products, data & reporting, and a host of creative tools. The industry continues to move faster than ever, and the need for our expertise, our technology, and our people has never been greater. We are a production’s best ally every step of the way. #OneCastOneCrew We are looking for a hands-on Engineering Manager to lead and transform a critical product engineering team. The team currently maintains a mature, revenue-generating platform built on legacy Java/Spring, JSP-based front ends, SQL Server stored procedures, and an aging reporting stack. The Engineering Manager will own the full modernization roadmap — migrating from legacy Java/Spring to modern Spring Boot microservices, replacing stored-procedure-heavy data logic with clean application-layer code, rebuilding JSP front ends in React (or a comparable modern UI framework), and upgrading the reporting system from its current legacy tooling to a modern, maintainable stack. Simultaneously, they will stand up the SDLC practices, working with DevOps upgrade CI/CD pipelines, observability, and production support processes that the team needs to ship confidently and respond to incidents quickly.

Requirements

7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including at least 2 years in a people-management or technical-lead role with direct reports.
Deep hands-on experience with Java and the Spring ecosystem; direct experience migrating from legacy Spring (XML-config, WAR deployments) to Spring Boot.
Strong SQL and relational-database skills, with demonstrated experience refactoring stored-procedure-heavy architectures into application-layer logic.
Production experience with modern front-end frameworks (React strongly preferred; Vue or Angular acceptable) and familiarity with API-first front-end/back-end integration patterns.
Track record of setting up or significantly improving CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and monitoring/observability stacks.
Proven ability to manage competing priorities: simultaneous production firefighting and strategic modernization.
Strong communication skills — comfortable presenting roadmaps and trade-offs to both engineers and senior business stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Experience in payroll, financial services, or other regulated/high-accuracy domains where data correctness is non-negotiable.
Familiarity with reporting-platform migrations (e.g., Crystal Reports, SSRS, Jasper, Stimulsoft, or similar) and understanding of pixel-perfect document generation requirements.
Hands-on experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and cloud platforms (AWS or Azure).
Familiarity with Agile/Scrum at a practical level — not ceremony for ceremony’s sake, but effective sprint planning, backlog grooming, and retrospectives.

Responsibilities

Lead the migration from legacy Java/Spring (non-Boot) to Spring Boot, establishing modular service boundaries, externalized configuration, and modern dependency management.
Systematically refactor business logic currently embedded in SQL Server stored procedures into well-tested application-layer code, improving testability, portability, and developer comprehension.
Define and execute the front-end migration from JSP pages to a modern component-based UI stack (React preferred), including API contract design between the new front end and back-end services.
Upgrade the reporting system from its current legacy platform to a modern reporting solution, coordinating with stakeholders to preserve report fidelity while improving maintainability and performance.
Establish architectural guardrails (ADRs, tech radar, code-review standards) that keep modernization coherent across the team.
Triage and prioritize the existing backlog of production defects; create a transparent burn-down plan with clear ownership and SLAs.
Implement a structured incident-response process: severity definitions, on-call rotation, blameless post-mortems, and follow-through on corrective actions.
Drive root-cause analysis for recurring production issues and convert findings into permanent fixes rather than repeated band-aids.
Establish production readiness reviews for all releases to prevent regression and reduce escaped defects.
Stand up a complete software development lifecycle: version-control workflow (branching strategy, PR reviews), automated build/test pipelines, artifact management, environment promotion, and release management.
Introduce or mature CI/CD tooling so that every merge triggers automated unit, integration, and smoke tests before reaching production.
Implement comprehensive monitoring and observability: application metrics, log aggregation, alerting thresholds, dashboards, and distributed tracing where appropriate.
Define and enforce code-quality gates (static analysis, test coverage minimums, security scanning) in the pipeline.
Document runbooks, on-call procedures, and operational playbooks so the team can respond to issues without depending on tribal knowledge.
Manage, coach, and grow a team of software engineers; conduct regular 1:1s, provide timely feedback, and support career development.
Build a culture of ownership, continuous improvement, and psychological safety where engineers feel empowered to raise concerns and propose better approaches.
Partner with recruiting to attract strong engineering talent — the modernization story is a selling point, so articulate the vision compellingly.
Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, QA, Data, and Infrastructure teams to align priorities and dependencies.
Communicate progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly to senior leadership; provide regular, data-backed status on modernization milestones and production health.