Principal Software Engineer - Apps

NBCUniversal•New York, NY

6h•$185,000 - $215,000•Hybrid

About The Position

NBCUniversal is one of the world's leading media and entertainment companies, creating and distributing world-class content across film, television, streaming, global theme park destinations, consumer products, and experiences. They own and operate leading entertainment and news brands including NBC, NBC News, NBC Sports, Telemundo, and Peacock. NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation. The company is committed to improving communities, giving back, and fostering an inclusive culture. NBC News' Digital Technology organization is focused on building and enhancing a suite of digital products, including mobile apps, OTT experiences (Roku, tvOS, FireTV, etc.), publishing tools, and their underlying platforms, reaching hundreds of millions of users globally through brands like NBC News and Today. The Apps Platform team specifically supports NBC News’ mobile and OTT engineering by developing shared libraries, tooling, and infrastructure to enable product teams to deliver high-quality applications quickly, reliably, and at scale. They are seeking a Principal Engineer to play a critical role in evolving this application platform. This role involves broad impact across systems, teams, and technical direction, requiring both tactical high-quality code writing and strategic leadership of complex, multi-team initiatives. The Principal Engineer will collaborate closely with Product, Engineering leadership, and application teams to enhance developer productivity, elevate quality standards, and define the long-term technical vision for applications. This position is ideal for an engineer who excels at solving cross-cutting problems, taking platform ownership, and mentoring others.

Requirements

8+ years of professional software development experience or equivalent industry experience
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent practical experience
Deep experience with application architecture and development in at least one mobile platform with the ability to work across platforms as needed
Recent experience with Kotlin, Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP), and/or Swift, including building and evolving shared libraries or platform components
Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across multiple teams without direct authority, influencing technical direction beyond an individual team through RFCs, architectural reviews, and shared best practices
Experience building or maintaining shared libraries, SDKs, or internal platforms
Fluency and comfort designing, maintaining, and improving CI/CD pipelines for mobile applications
Demonstrated success leading and delivering complex projects involving multiple engineers, external dependencies, and long-term technical trade-offs
Strong problem-solving skills, sound engineering judgment, and systems-level thinking
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including technical documentation and design reviews with the ability to present the same information to both technical and non-technical audiences

Nice To Haves

Experience shipping high-traffic consumer applications to production, including ownership of release processes, versioning, and post-release support
Experience integrating and supporting video playback technologies such as ExoPlayer, AVFoundation, and/or JW Player
Familiarity with dynamic ad integration and tracking (client-side and server-side ad insertion) in video content
Experience designing, standardizing, or scaling automated testing strategies across multiple platforms (unit, integration, UI, E2E)
Experience working within a large, matrixed media organization, effectively navigating cross-team dependencies and stakeholder alignment

Responsibilities

Drive the architecture and evolution of shared application libraries and platform components used across iOS, Android, and OTT applications
Author and contribute to RFCs, technical design documents, and proposals that influence engineering direction across teams
Partner with application teams to identify pain points and deliver platform solutions that improve velocity, reliability, and developer experience
Design, build, and evolve CI/CD pipelines and release workflows supporting mobile and OTT applications
Identify and act on opportunities to standardize testing best practices across platforms, working closely with QA and application teams
Write code and tests that set a high bar for quality, maintainability, performance, and security
Debug complex platform and release issues to identify root causes and systemic improvements
Help define long-term platform roadmaps and technical vision aligned with product and business goals
Actively mentor and coach engineers, supporting individual growth and raising the technical bar across teams
Promote a culture of collaboration, shared ownership, and continuous improvement