Software Engineer

Songtrust • Nashville, TN

2h • Hybrid

About The Position

Songtrust® is the world's largest technology solution for global music publishing royalty collection and administration. Our mission is to simplify music rights management and help songwriters, publishers, labels, and distributors collect what they're owed—anywhere in the world.
Our platform manages a catalog of over 3 million songs representing 350,000+ songwriters, including contributors to music by Drake, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar, and more. Songtrust works with leading partners like CD Baby, Downtown Music Publishing, Symphonic Distribution, Sub Pop Publishing, and Trap Nation.
Songtrust operates one of the most extensive publishing networks in the industry, connecting to 60+ global pay sources across 245+ countries and territories. We are headquartered in New York City and owned by Downtown Music Holdings.
We're looking for a senior, highly autonomous Software Engineer to take deep ownership of our core proprietary publishing and delivery services.
You'll be working on a mission-critical, SQL-heavy Django system backed by PostgreSQL, with a Django REST Framework API layer and a custom React frontend. The backend drives worker processes that handle business operations and processing at scale. You'll help deconstruct, refactor, and modernize this system as we evolve toward a service-oriented and microservices architecture. Over time, you will become a subject matter expert in how the system works, why it was built the way it was, and how to thoughtfully improve upon it without disrupting production.
If you enjoy untangling real-world complexity, working close to the data, and building
systems where accuracy and trust truly matter, this role is for you.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, ideally working on complex, long-lived systems.
• Strong proficiency in Python and Django, including Django REST Framework and the Django ORM.
• Deep comfort working directly with PostgreSQL—writing and optimizing raw SQL, working with materialized views, multiple schemas, and read replicas. (This is not an ORM-only role).
• Experience with AWS services, particularly SQS, S3, and Lambda.
• Experience building and maintaining business-critical applications.
• A proven ability to refactor legacy systems and improve architecture without breaking production.
• Experience designing or contributing to service-oriented or microservice architectures, including event-driven and worker-based patterns.
• Strong debugging, performance profiling, and systems-level thinking skills.
• Comfort operating with ambiguity and taking initiative—this role requires a true self-starter mindset with entrepreneurial qualities.
• Familiarity with modern development practices including CI/CD, testing, and documentation.
• A deep respect for songwriters, copyright, and intellectual property, and an understanding that accuracy, transparency, and trust are foundational.
• A genuine appreciation for the complexity of the music publishing ecosystem.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with AWS CDK (TypeScript), Docker, and infrastructure as code.
• Frontend experience with React and TypeScript, or equivalent modern frameworks.
• Exposure to OpenAPI/schema-driven API design (we use drf-spectacular), JSON Schema, or Apache Avro.
• Hands-on experience with Datadog (StatsD, monitors as code) or Sentry.
• Background in data pipelines, ETL workflows, or large-scale reporting systems—particularly between PostgreSQL and legacy databases.
• Experience with CircleCI or similar CI/CD platforms.
• Familiarity with music industry data standards such as CWR (Common Works Registration) or CISAC codes.
• Prior work on financial, royalty, or high-integrity data platforms.
• Prior experience with secure coding practice and understanding of OWASP top 10.

Responsibilities

• Take technical ownership of core in-house systems that power global royalty collection and reporting.
• Become a domain expert in our proprietary platform, data models, and publishing workflows.
• Analyze, refactor, and modernize a large, SQL-intensive Django application—including raw SQL, materialized views, multi-schema PostgreSQL configurations, and complex ORM usage.
• Lead and contribute to the evolution from a monolithic architecture toward microservices, APIs, and clearer domain boundaries.
• Design and implement backend and frontend features using Python, Django, Django REST Framework, PostgreSQL, and React, with an eye toward scalability and long-term maintainability.
• Build and maintain event-driven worker processes powered by AWS SQS and Lambda that handle catalog delivery, file generation, and transmission to global collection societies.
• Partner closely with product, data, and business stakeholders to translate complex requirements into durable technical solutions.
• Improve system performance, reliability, and observability using Datadog (custom metrics, monitors as code, dashboards) and Sentry in a high-volume, high-integrity data environment.
• Write high-quality, well-tested code and take responsibility for its long-term health in production.
• Champion best practices around documentation, testing, CI/CD (CircleCI), and infrastructure as code (AWS CDK).
• Mentor and support junior engineers through code reviews, architectural guidance, and shared problem-solving.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits including Medical, Dental, Vision, Life Insurance, and 401(k) with match.
• Paid volunteer hours and a strong commitment to inclusion and community.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed