Sr. Staff Software Engineer

SmartRecruiters, Inc.; Englewood Cliffs (NJ); On-site; USD 180,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Versant Media is seeking a Senior Staff Engineer to lead complex initiatives across engineering teams. You will own technical direction for a major platform, turning business priorities into delivery plans and collaborating with principal engineers to align with strategy.

You will mentor engineers, drive platform modernization, and evaluate SaaS and AI-enabled solutions for value, reliability, and cost. Strong leadership and hands-on coding are essential.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software development experience with technical leadership across multiple teams.
• Experience in cloud-native architecture on AWS, Azure, or GCP, including serverless and event-driven systems.
• Experience designing, building, operating secure, scalable distributed systems and modernizing legacy apps.
• Ability to evaluate SaaS and low-code/no-code platforms with Gen AI capabilities.
• Strong communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead modernization across related systems with scalable architecture and migration plans.
• Coordinate team dependencies and remove blockers from prototyping to production.
• Mentor Senior and Staff Engineers and promote shared practices and debt reduction.
• Evaluate platform choices (SaaS, low-code) for business value and maintainability.
• Guide Gen AI pilots, assess data handling and cost before wider adoption.

Skills

Cloud-native

AWS/Azure/GCP

Distributed systems

Gen AI awareness

Mentoring

Communication

Hands-on engineering

Tools

Kafka

Kinesis

Redis

ElastiCache

CI/CD

IaC

Job description

• Compensation: USD 180,000 - USD 200,000 - yearly

Company Description

VERSANT (Nasdaq: VSNT) is an industry-changing media and entertainment business and home to trusted brands that shape culture, inform audiences, and build lasting connections. It operates across four core markets: political news and opinion, business news and personal finance, golf, and sports and genre entertainment. These markets are served through a powerful portfolio of iconic and innovative brands, including CNBC, MS NOW, USA Network, Golf Channel, Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and Versant's sports division USA Sports, along with complementary digital assets including Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and GolfPass.

Job Description

Role Overview

We are seeking a Senior Staff Engineer to lead complex initiatives across several related engineering teams. As a hands-on individual contributor, you will own technical direction for a major platform or business domain and turn business priorities into delivery plans. You will partner with Principal Engineers and engineering leadership to align this work with the broader technical strategy.

Key Responsibilities

• Domain Architecture: Lead modernization across related systems, defining scalable architecture, secure integration patterns, and practical migration plans.
• Technical Delivery: Turn ambiguous problems into delivery plans, coordinate team dependencies, and remove blockers from prototyping through production.
• Hands-on Engineering: Build critical components and prototypes, lead design and code reviews, and solve complex problems spanning services or teams.
• Platform Choices: Evaluate SaaS, low-code/no-code, and custom solutions for business value, integration, maintainability, and total cost of ownership.
• Gen AI Adoption: Guide practical Gen AI pilots, assessing output quality, data handling, reliability, and cost before broader adoption.
• Operational Excellence: Improve testing, observability, and reliability across teams. Lead complex incident resolution and address recurring operational issues.
• Business Alignment: Align priorities and trade-offs with business and product leaders. Measure gains in customer outcomes, performance, and delivery speed.
• Mentoring and Standards: Mentor Senior and Staff Engineers across teams, strengthen technical ownership, and promote shared practices, reusable solutions, and technical debt reduction.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software development experience, with demonstrated technical leadership of initiatives spanning multiple teams.
• Hands-on expertise in cloud-native architecture on AWS, Azure, or GCP, including serverless and event-driven systems.
• Experience designing, building, and operating secure, scalable distributed systems and modernizing legacy applications.
• Ability to evaluate SaaS and low-code/no-code platforms, with working knowledge of Gen AI capabilities and limitations.
• Track record of navigating ambiguity, making architectural trade-offs, and delivering measurable business outcomes through cross-team collaboration.
• Strong coding and design skills, with experience improving software quality, reliability, and engineering practices.
• Clear communication with technical and non-technical stakeholders, and experience mentoring senior engineers and influencing without formal authority.

Preferred Qualifications

• Full-stack experience across backend, frontend, cloud, and infrastructure.
• Experience with SQL and NoSQL, messaging such as Kafka or Kinesis, and caching such as Redis or ElastiCache.
• Experience with DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure as code.
• Practical experience delivering Gen AI solutions or integrating AI services into business workflows.
• Experience in media, entertainment, digital platforms, or fast-paced modernization environments.

Why Join Versant

• Shape major platforms and engineering practices during Versant's modernization.
• Work on business-critical initiatives with direct visibility to senior leadership.
• Join a culture that values ownership, pragmatic decisions, and continuous learning.

Additional Information

As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with a VERSANT Media employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. VERSANT Media's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. You can submit your request to [e-mail].

VERSANT Media is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. We include a good faith pay range for each position to comply with applicable state and local pay transparency laws and to promote equity across our organization. Actual compensation will be based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, experience, and location and may include additional forms of compensation and benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, etc.

VERSANT Media is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at VERSANT via-email, the Internet, or in any form and/or method without a valid written Statement of Work in place for this position from VERSANT's Talent Acquisition team will be deemed the sole property of VERSANT. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by VERSANT as a result of the referral or through other means.

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