Principal Software Engineer, Data Platforms

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 focuses on building scalable backend and data-driven services while collaborating with various stakeholders to ensure effective data management and governance.

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