VERSANT is a leading force in news, sports and entertainment, and they are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to shape the architecture and engineering standards of their modern data platform. This role focuses on building scalable backend and data-driven services while collaborating with various stakeholders to enable innovative data solutions.
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
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- 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
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- 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