Staff Software Engineer

IMG LIVE; California (MO); On-site; USD 176,000 - 235,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health care

Retirement plan

Paid time off

Job summary

WME is building the next generation of internal platforms powering one of the world's leading entertainment companies. The Staff Software Engineer will own an area of the platform, guiding multiple teams, staffing, and architectural decisions while aligning with product goals.

You will operate through team leads, not direct execution, and shape how the stack evolves. We emphasize AI-assisted development, cross-functional collaboration, and growth of engineering leaders.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software engineering experience.
• Strong full-stack background building modern web apps.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (Azure).
• Experience designing relational databases (PostgreSQL).

Responsibilities

• Own an area of the platform across multiple teams.
• Manage outcomes and resource planning for your area.
• Define and defend the quarterly roadmap and priorities.
• Grow engineers into technical leadership and hire when needed.
• Partner with a TPM to coordinate planning and delivery.
• Make architectural calls and steer shared components.

Skills

Ownership

Team leadership

Hiring and interviewing

Roadmap ownership

Technical judgment

Architectural design

Cross-functional collaboration

Tools

React

TypeScript

Next.js

Node.js

PostgreSQL

Azure

Terraform

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD / GitHub Actions

gRPC

Job description

WME is building the next generation of internal platforms that power one of the world's leading entertainment companies. The software we build helps agents and teams manage relationships, deals, and opportunities across the global entertainment industry. We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer to take ownership of a major area of our platform. This is a senior ownership role rather than a senior individual contributor role. You'll be accountable for whether your area is staffed well, moving at the speed the business needs, aligned with product, and making deliberate architectural choices. You'll be working through the team leads who run day-to-day execution rather than driving that execution yourself. Deep technical judgment still matters here. You can't set a technical bar you couldn't personally meet, and you'll make the calls that shape how these systems evolve. But the work happens a level up from the ticket queue, and the engineers who thrive in this role are the ones who find that shift energizing rather than limiting. We're building this engineering organization largely from the ground up, so we're looking for people who enjoy scrappy environments, are comfortable navigating ambiguity, and want to help shape how a team operates. We're also investing heavily in AI-assisted development, and engineers here actively use modern AI tools and workflows to improve development velocity and product quality. We take the work seriously, but not ourselves.

What You'll Do

Own an area of the platform. You'll be responsible for the outcomes of one or more teams working across a connected set of product surfaces. Scope is assigned based on business need and shifts as the org grows. Keep leadership ahead of risk. Your manager should hear about slippage, resourcing gaps, or a bad bet before they have to ask. That includes pushing back if a timeline isn't realistic, or a product ask will create debt worth knowing about. Raising risk early is never treated as a failure here. Give your teams context. Engineers in your area should understand why a priority exists, why a tradeoff was made, and why something changed. You're the connection between company direction and day-to-day execution. Own technical health. Staffing mix, delivery pace, product alignment, and architectural direction all sit with you. A team can be fully staffed and shipping quickly while quietly accumulating problems, so tracking velocity isn't the same as setting the technical bar - you're responsible for both. Own the roadmap. You should be able to articulate what your area is building over the next quarter and defend the sequencing on your own. Grow leads. Identifying and developing engineers who can own execution is a core part of the job, not a side effect of it. Hire. You'll source and interview for your own teams and weigh in on candidates joining them. Partner with a technical program manager. You'll work alongside a TPM who runs planning cadence, cross-team dependencies, and operational execution. You set the direction and make the calls; they keep the machinery of delivery running, so you're not absorbed into it. Make architectural calls. Including the uncomfortable ones. You decide where to take on debt and where to pay it down, rather than letting either drift by default. Shape architecture beyond your own area. You'll work with engineering leadership and peer Staff Engineers on overall system architecture and the shared components that cut across products.

Example Problems You Might Own

• Designing systems that capture and connect relationships across the entertainment industry
• Building modern CRM workflows that replace fragmented legacy tools and spreadsheets
• Developing AI-powered features that surface insights from operational data
• Creating APIs and services that support complex deal and workflow management
• Migrating legacy applications into modern web-based systems

What We're Looking For

• Ownership and judgment
• Experience owning outcomes across multiple teams or workstreams at once, through leads rather than direct execution
• A track record of surfacing risk early and pushing back constructively on unrealistic scope or timelines
• Experience growing engineers into technical leadership
• Comfort owning a roadmap and defending its prioritization
• Hiring and interviewing experience
• Comfort working where systems, processes, and org structure are still forming
• Technical depth
  • Extensive software engineering experience, typically 15+ years
  • Strong full-stack background building modern web applications, with deep proficiency in React, TypeScript, and Next.js
  • Solid backend experience with Node.js, building scalable services and APIs (REST and gRPC)
  • Experience designing and managing relational databases, particularly PostgreSQL
  • Experience with cloud infrastructure; Azure preferred, including cloud-native services such as serverless functions, managed databases, queues, and blob storage
  • Containerized workloads with Docker and Kubernetes, and infrastructure as code with Terraform
  • Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and developer tooling (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or similar)
  • Strong product instincts and a collaborative mindset

How We Build

• Ship practical software that solves real problems
• Favor simple, maintainable architectures
• Work closely across engineering, product, and design
• Use modern cloud infrastructure (Azure), Terraform, and containerized deployments
• Maintain automated CI/CD pipelines to keep shipping fast and safe
• Leverage AI-assisted development across the engineering workflow
• AI-First Engineering

AI tools are part of our everyday engineering workflow. We encourage engineers to use modern AI-assisted development tools to accelerate coding, testing, debugging, and system design, and we're actively exploring how AI can enhance the systems we build.

Per local requirements and in the interest of transparency, the rate shown below reflects the prevalent current hiring range for this position. Hiring pay rates are based on a number of factors, including location and may vary depending on job-related qualifications, knowledge, skills and experience. The company strives to provide locally competitive rewards packages, which include base rate along with, as applicable, short- and long-term incentives, growth and developmental opportunities, and robust benefits, such as health care, retirement, vacation and other paid time off, and additional offerings.

Hiring Rate Minimum: $176,250 annually (minimum will not fall below the applicable state/local minimum salary thresholds)

Hiring Rate Maximum: $235,000 annually

WME is an equal opportunity employer and encourages applications from qualified and eligible candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, or religion or belief.

WME Group is a global network of businesses that represent the world's leading talent, intellectual property and brands.

WME Group comprises preeminent talent agency WME, global marketing agency 160over90, brand licensing agency IMG Licensing, and nonscripted content business Pantheon Media Group.