Lead Engineer, Discovery

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in California, +3 more states.

📋 Description

• Lead the architecture and design of backend services and APIs, focusing on search, browsing, recommendations, editorial curation, and content metadata.

• Act as a hands-on technical authority during design reviews.

• Decompose large-scale architectural projects into manageable, measurable phases.

• Oversee the delivery of the most complex or highest-risk components.

• Establish and uphold standards for code quality, testing, API design, and documentation.

• Ensure backend services achieve targets for availability, low latency, and high concurrency.

• Direct on-call practices, incident response, and postmortem analysis.

• Serve as the senior escalation point for intricate production challenges.

• Define, monitor, and enhance operational KPIs.

• Collaborate with Product Management and the Data Science & Personalization teams.

• Represent the team in technical discussions across various domains.

• Articulate technical trade-offs, design choices, and associated risks.

• Mentor and develop engineers through code reviews, design collaboration, and hands-on support.

• Work alongside the Engineering Manager on technical recruitment and onboarding processes.

• Promote technical ownership and accountability for operations.

• Coordinate with distributed or offshore engineering teams.

• Contribute to agile processes, including sprint planning, backlog refinement, and retrospectives.

• Maintain documentation for system architecture, API contracts, domain data models, and operational runbooks.

⛳️ Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in software engineering.

• Proven track record as a senior hands-on contributor in backend and distributed systems within streaming, media, e-commerce, or other high-traffic consumer platforms.

• Experience in owning the design and delivery of high-concurrency APIs or platforms utilized at scale across diverse client surfaces.

• Strong knowledge of search indexing, recommendation systems, content metadata, or ranking algorithms.

• Extensive, current, hands-on expertise in distributed systems, API design, caching strategies, and data modeling for high-throughput, low-latency services.

• Capability to act as the technical tie-breaker in architectural evaluations.

• Proficient in Java-based backend services, cloud infrastructure (preferably GCP), and modern CI/CD methodologies.

• Experience managing services under stringent SLAs.

• Familiarity with metrics such as p99 latency, error rates, cache hit ratios, and A/B testing data.

• History of mentoring engineers without formal management authority.

• Exceptional communication and cross-functional collaboration abilities.

• Comfortable working with geographically distributed engineering teams across different time zones.

• Strong inclination towards incremental, measurable delivery.

• Proactive approach to ensuring operational health and system reliability.

• Preferred: experience with recommendation systems, ML-adjacent infrastructure, or search technologies like Elasticsearch or Solr.

• Preferred: experience with multi-brand or multi-app streaming platforms (AVOD, SVOD, FAST).

• Preferred: experience with vendor and offshore engineering resources.

🏝️ Benefits

• Medical insurance.

• Dental insurance.

• Vision insurance.

• 401(k) plan.

• Life insurance coverage.

• Disability benefits.

• Tuition assistance program.

• Paid time off (PTO).

• Competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits packages.

• Generous paid time off.

• Complimentary subscriptions to HBO Max, Paramount+, and other Skydance streaming services and digital news products.

• Exclusive screenings and events.

• Speaker series.

• Volunteer opportunities.

• Bonus eligibility.