Manager, Software Engineering

Cast & Crew is a leader in the entertainment technology and services industry, seeking a hands-on Engineering Manager to lead a critical product engineering team. The role focuses on modernizing a legacy platform, improving production stability, and enhancing software development practices while managing and developing a team of engineers.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the migration from legacy Java/Spring (non-Boot) to Spring Boot, establishing modular service boundaries, externalized configuration, and modern dependency management
• Systematically refactor business logic currently embedded in SQL Server stored procedures into well-tested application-layer code, improving testability, portability, and developer comprehension
• Define and execute the front-end migration from JSP pages to a modern component-based UI stack (React preferred), including API contract design between the new front end and back-end services
• Upgrade the reporting system from its current legacy platform to a modern reporting solution, coordinating with stakeholders to preserve report fidelity while improving maintainability and performance
• Establish architectural guardrails (ADRs, tech radar, code-review standards) that keep modernization coherent across the team
• Triage and prioritize the existing backlog of production defects; create a transparent burn-down plan with clear ownership and SLAs
• Implement a structured incident-response process: severity definitions, on-call rotation, blameless post-mortems, and follow-through on corrective actions
• Drive root-cause analysis for recurring production issues and convert findings into permanent fixes rather than repeated band-aids
• Establish production readiness reviews for all releases to prevent regression and reduce escaped defects
• Stand up a complete software development lifecycle: version-control workflow (branching strategy, PR reviews), automated build/test pipelines, artifact management, environment promotion, and release management
• Introduce or mature CI/CD tooling so that every merge triggers automated unit, integration, and smoke tests before reaching production
• Implement comprehensive monitoring and observability: application metrics, log aggregation, alerting thresholds, dashboards, and distributed tracing where appropriate
• Define and enforce code-quality gates (static analysis, test coverage minimums, security scanning) in the pipeline
• Document runbooks, on-call procedures, and operational playbooks so the team can respond to issues without depending on tribal knowledge
• Manage, coach, and grow a team of software engineers; conduct regular 1:1s, provide timely feedback, and support career development
• Build a culture of ownership, continuous improvement, and psychological safety where engineers feel empowered to raise concerns and propose better approaches
• Partner with recruiting to attract strong engineering talent — the modernization story is a selling point, so articulate the vision compellingly
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, QA, Data, and Infrastructure teams to align priorities and dependencies
• Communicate progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly to senior leadership; provide regular, data-backed status on modernization milestones and production health

Requirements:

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including at least 2 years in a people-management or technical-lead role with direct reports
• Deep hands-on experience with Java and the Spring ecosystem; direct experience migrating from legacy Spring (XML-config, WAR deployments) to Spring Boot
• Strong SQL and relational-database skills, with demonstrated experience refactoring stored-procedure-heavy architectures into application-layer logic
• Production experience with modern front-end frameworks (React strongly preferred; Vue or Angular acceptable) and familiarity with API-first front-end/back-end integration patterns
• Track record of setting up or significantly improving CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and monitoring/observability stacks
• Proven ability to manage competing priorities: simultaneous production firefighting and strategic modernization
• Strong communication skills — comfortable presenting roadmaps and trade-offs to both engineers and senior business stakeholders
• Experience in payroll, financial services, or other regulated/high-accuracy domains where data correctness is non-negotiable
• Familiarity with reporting-platform migrations (e.g., Crystal Reports, SSRS, Jasper, Stimulsoft, or similar) and understanding of pixel-perfect document generation requirements
• Hands-on experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and cloud platforms (AWS or Azure)
• Familiarity with Agile/Scrum at a practical level — not ceremony for ceremony's sake, but effective sprint planning, backlog grooming, and retrospectives