Principal Engineer

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

Versant Media is seeking a highly accomplished Principal Web & Content Supply Chain Engineer to serve as the chief technical authority and architectural leader for our Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) applications, public-facing websites, APIs, and critical internal Content Management Systems (CMS).

This role is centered on defining the standards, governance, and technical implementation required to deliver high-performance, reliable, and secure digital experiences across our premium News, Sports, and Entertainment brands, ensuring a seamless flow of content from creation to consumption.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Architectural Leadership & Strategy Define DTC Architecture
• Lead the strategic development and implementation of the application architecture for all consumer-facing DTC properties (websites, APIs), focusing on scalability, performance, security, and maintainability, with a mandate to achieve and maintain aggressive Service Level Objectives (SLOs).
• Establish a Center of Excellence: Act as the subject matter expert, setting the technical standards, coding best practices, and governance playbooks for all engineering teams building and supporting Versant Media's digital applications.
• Performance & Observability: Own the strategy for application observability, logging, monitoring, and alerting. Drive initiatives to maximize page load speed, Core Web Vitals (CWV), and overall application health through deep analysis and optimization of data-intensive operations.
• Content Supply Chain & CMS Integration Content Management System (CMS) Ownership: Serve as the technical lead for our CMS architecture, defining the integration points, API specifications, and workflow logic to ensure a seamless, efficient content publishing pipeline, including support for user-generated content workflows.
• API Design & Governance: Define the architecture and standards for all public-facing and internal APIs that power the DTC apps, ensuring they are robust, performant, and correctly versioned, leveraging experience on an Architecture Council.
• Front-to-Back Integration: Oversee the technical integration between the core content repositories (CMS/MAM), microservices, and the final presentation layers across all web properties.
• Engineering Practices & Governance CI/CD Pipeline & Delivery: Define and optimize the Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines for front-end and back-end services, promoting frequent, high-quality, and automated releases.
• Security & Compliance: Establish and enforce security best practices across all DTC codebases and infrastructure, ensuring compliance with industry standards and internal policies.
• Mentorship & Code Review: Provide senior mentorship to engineering teams and conduct high-level technical design and code reviews across multiple systems to ensure alignment with architectural standards.
• Application Modernization & Technical Leadership System Modernization & Redesign: Lead the architectural redesign and replacement of core systems and legacy technology components, including writing technical designs and proposals to sunset old tech and achieve strategic modernization goals.
• Technical Debt & Upgrades: Champion efforts for technical debt elimination and lead major platform version upgrades across the digital application ecosystem.
• Innovation & Future-Proofing: Drive the continuous evolution of our technology stack through the evaluation and adoption of modern frameworks, cloud-native services, and engineering patterns.

Qualifications

The ideal candidate possesses deep, proven experience architecting, building, and operating high-traffic digital platforms and robust content supply chains.

• Proven experience with web