Principal Software Engineer

Versant Media is a leading force in news, sports, and entertainment, seeking a Principal Software Engineer to shape the architecture and engineering standards of their modern data platform. The role involves designing scalable backend services and collaborating with various stakeholders to enhance data management and governance capabilities.

Responsibilities:

• Design, build, and evolve backend services and data platform components using Node.js and TypeScript
• Define and implement modular, service-oriented architectures that support scalable data ingestion, transformation, and access patterns
• Partner with data engineering, platform, and governance stakeholders to enable:
• Lakehouse-style architectures
• ELT pipelines
• Metadata management, lineage, and governance capabilities
• Establish and evangelize engineering best practices, including:
• Object-oriented design and proven design patterns
• Test-driven development (TDD) and strong automated test coverage
• Secure development lifecycle (SDL) principles
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines that support safe, repeatable, and observable deployments
• Evaluate and integrate modern data storage and processing technologies where appropriate
• Act as a technical leader and collaborator:
• Contribute to architectural decisions
• Review designs and code
• Mentor other engineers through influence, not authority
• Work effectively in a matrixed enterprise environment with both legacy systems and modern platforms

Requirements:

• Deep proficiency with Node.js and TypeScript in production environments
• Strong foundation in software engineering fundamentals, including: Object-oriented programming, Design patterns API and service design
• Solid understanding of data engineering concepts, including: Lakehouse architectures, ELT pipelines
• Data governance, metadata, and lineage
• Experience building modular or microservice-based systems
• Strong commitment to TDD, automated testing, and code quality
• Hands-on experience with CI/CD pipelines and modern DevOps practices
• Familiarity with secure development lifecycle (SDL) concepts
• Self-directed, proactive, and comfortable operating with a high degree of ownership
• Strong collaborator who communicates effectively across engineering and non-engineering partners
• Exposure to ML platforms or services (e.g., Databricks, AWS Bedrock)
• Familiarity with analytics and BI tools (Tableau, Power BI, or similar)
• Experience working in media, streaming, or large-scale enterprise environments
• Prior experience modernizing or integrating legacy systems within a cloud-native architecture