Director, Engineering, Mobile & Connected TV

Company Description

VERSANT is a leading force in news, sports and entertainment - home to iconic and trusted brands that inspire, inform, and delight audiences. Our unique combination of content, technology and services enriches the cultural fabric, igniting passions, sparking conversations, and connecting people to what they love most.

As an independent, publicly traded company, VERSANT brings together powerhouse cable networks - including USA Network, CNBC, MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and Golf Channel - with dynamic digital and direct-to-consumer brands such as Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow, GolfPass, and SportsEngine. Together, these businesses reflect our commitment to delivering exceptional experiences across every screen and service.

VERSANT is an industry-changing media company fueled by innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit. With a strong foundation and a forward-looking vision, VERSANT empowers creativity, embraces change, and drives connection in an ever-evolving world.

Job Description

We are looking for an experienced and customer-obsessed Director of Engineering to lead the development and evolution of our mobile and connected TV (CTV) platforms across iOS, Android, tvOS, Roku, and Lightning-based applications. This role will own the technical vision, execution, and performance of Versant’s mobile and CTV products, ensuring our apps deliver world-class viewing experiences to millions of users.

You will lead multiple engineering teams, foster cross-functional collaboration, and work closely with Product, Design, QA, Data, and Business stakeholders to drive platform innovation, technical excellence, and operational performance. This is a highly visible leadership role for someone who is both strategic and hands-on, with a passion for media technology and delivering delightful customer experiences.

Key Responsibilities:

• Leadership & Strategy Lead, inspire, and scale a team of engineers and engineering managers across mobile (iOS, Android) and CTV (tvOS, Roku, Lightning) platforms
• Define and drive the technical strategy, roadmap, and execution plans aligned with product vision and business priorities
• Act as the voice of engineering in product and executive conversations—advocating for scalability, performance, maintainability, and customer impact
• Collaborate closely with stakeholders across Product, Design, Editorial, QA, Video Engineering, and UX Research to shape platform direction and user experience
• Engineering Excellence: Ensure high availability, reliability, and performance across mobile and CTV apps
• Champion best practices in software development, security, architecture, testing, and CI/CD
• Drive consistency in architecture and shared services across mobile and CTV platforms, identifying opportunities for modularization and cross-platform efficiency
• Oversee architectural decisions to support long-term maintainability and extensibility
• Establish and uphold technical governance practices to ensure code quality, platform security, and development consistency
• Customer Experience & Delivery: Advocate relentlessly for the end user—driving features and optimizations that enhance speed, video quality, usability, and engagement
• Balance rapid feature delivery with technical sustainability and platform quality
• Oversee incident response and operational health of apps across all supported devices
• Define and track key engineering KPIs including crash rate, app performance, playback reliability, code quality, application security posture improvements and delivery velocity
• Coordinate with internal platform teams, third-party service providers, and device partners for feature rollouts and platform enhancements.
• Talent & Culture: Mentor, develop, and retain top engineering talent; grow technical leadership within the teams
• Foster an inclusive and collaborative culture of excellence, ownership, and innovation
• Lead by example in promoting accountability, clear communication, and high-impact execution

Qualifications

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 5+ years in engineering leadership roles
• Proven experience delivering large-scale mobile and/or CTV applications at high user scale
• Strong technical background in native mobile (iOS, Android) and CTV (tvOS, Roku, Lightning framework) development
• Experience managing multiple teams or platforms with varying tech stacks and device-specific needs
• Strong knowledge of video streaming, playback optimization, and performance tuning
• Experience with video streaming technologies (HLS, DASH, DRM, CDNs)
• Experience with video players (e.g., JWPlayer, VideoJS, Shaka, ExoPlayer, AVPlayer), analytics tools (Adobe, Comscore) and QoS (Conviva)
• Deep u