Lead Software Engineer

 

Location: In-Office, New York / Los Angeles / San Francisco / Ft. Lauderdale

 

Overview:

 

Paramount is looking for a Lead Software Engineer to join our Web Engineering organization. In this role, you'll own the technical direction and delivery of frontend experiences across Paramount+ and the other brands we support. You'll lead a team of engineers, drive execution on high-impact projects, and raise the bar on code quality, performance, and developer experience — all while shipping features that millions of users interact with every day. This is a hands-on leadership role. You'll spend meaningful time in the codebase while also mentoring engineers, unblocking teams, and partnering closely with Product, Design, and Backend Engineering to deliver great user experiences. If you thrive at the intersection of technical depth and people leadership, this role is for you.

 

Responsibilities:

 

• Lead the technical planning, execution, and delivery of frontend features for Paramount+ and Pluto.tv web applications

• Build and maintain high-quality React and Next.js applications with a focus on performance, reliability, and scalability

• Own and evolve frontend architecture decisions — component design, data fetching patterns, state management, and rendering strategies

• Develop and maintain a GraphQL API layer (Apollo Server) consumed by multiple frontend applications

• Contribute to and steward shared packages across a monorepo (pnpm workspaces, Turborepo)

• Lead and mentor a team of engineers — provide technical guidance, conduct code reviews, and foster a culture of continuous improvement

• Drive web performance optimization across the application, with a focus on Core Web Vitals, critical rendering path, and perceived load times

• Work with personalization and engagement teams to ship real-time recommendations, personalized artwork, sign-up flow optimization, and short-form video experiences across Paramount+ and Pluto.tv web surfaces

• Partner with Product and Design to translate requirements into well-scoped, well-executed technical solutions

• Collaborate with Backend Engineering and DevOps/SRE teams to build and deploy high-performing services

• Continuously improve CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins), testing infrastructure, and developer tooling

• Champion the adoption of modern AI-powered development tools and workflows to accelerate team velocity and code quality

• Communicate tradeoffs, technical decisions, and project status clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders

• Write things down — RFCs, ADRs, Confluence pages, Slack threads — and default to async communication that scales

 

Basic Qualifications:

 

• 7+ years of experience in web application development

• 2+ years of experience in a technical leadership or lead engineer role

• BS degree in Computer Science, a similar technical field of study, or equivalent applicable experience

• Deep knowledge of web application development, best practices, and modern frontend architecture

• Deep knowledge of Object Oriented Programming and Design, data structures, and algorithms

• Expert-level JavaScript/TypeScript, CSS, Sass, HTML

• Strong experience building production applications with React (including SSR) and Next.js or similar frameworks

• Solid understanding of GraphQL — schema design, resolvers, federation

• Familiarity with monorepo tooling (pnpm workspaces, Turborepo or equivalent)

• Deep understanding of web performance, browser rendering, Core Web Vitals, and the critical rendering path

• Experience with Webpack, Rspack, and/or Turbopack

• Strong testing discipline — Jest, Cypress, or equivalent

• Good understanding of HTTP protocol and caching layers

• Solid knowledge of the HTML DOM and Event APIs

• Demonstrated ability to lead engineers, make architectural decisions, and communicate design concepts clearly — in writing, design reviews, and real-time discussion