Lead Software Engineer

Lead Software Engineer

Paramount is looking for a hardworking Lead Software Engineer - Android to develop cohesive solutions to content based technical obstacles. The role will be end-to-end from understanding the goals and roadmaps of the product and engineering teams, through design and architecture of any solution and the delivery and maintenance of those platforms once in place. This role sits at the intersection of deep Android platform engineering and AI-native development: daily use of AI agents and coding tools (Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot) and hands-on collaboration with ML and data science teams on client-facing features.

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

• Drive the architectural direction and design of Android applications
• Establish best practices for coding, testing, and deployment
• Evangelize new tools, frameworks, and processes for continued innovation and development efficiency
• Prepare architectural diagrams and technical specifications for the engineering team to deliver high quality, maintainable software
• Lead architectural discussions around feature development and software development best practice

Involvement in performance and playback optimizations, overall app stability and profiling

Application Development

• Design, develop, test, and deploy new solutions as well as maintaining, integrating and improving existing solutions using modern technologies and industry best practices
• Ensure robust performance, responsiveness, and quality of applications, troubleshooting and debugging as needed

AI-Integrated Development

• Leverage AI-driven coding assistants like Copilot, Cursor, or Claude as a core component of the daily engineering lifecycle, including architectural design, implementation, and refactoring.
• Partner with technical leadership to establish and optimize safe, high-impact practices for utilizing AI tools within the development team.
• Drive cross-functional initiatives to integrate LLM and ML capabilities into product features, such as advanced search, discovery, and personalized content understanding.

Mentorship

• Mentor mid- and senior-level engineers, sharing technical expertise and guiding professional growth
• Participate in code reviews to maintain code quality and consistency across the team

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with product managers, designers, and other engineering teams to clarify requirements
• Coordinate with backend services and APIs to ensure seamless integration and feature delivery

Process Improvement

• Enhance software development processes and policies, driving continuous improvement in code quality, development speed, and overall team productivity
• Stay current with emerging Android technologies, libraries, and trends, recommending their adoption where beneficial

Ownership and Accountability

• Partner closely with the Android Engineering Manager on development strategies
• Ensure the application is highly responsive and performant
• Safeguard against production incidents
• Enable engineers to deliver mission-critical features and enhancements
• Identify technical risks and potential bottlenecks, proposing solutions to mitigate them

Expertise in Android Development

• Proficient in Kotlin and Java, with a solid understanding of the Android SDK and different Android versions
• Deep knowledge of Architecture Patterns and Material Design (e.g., MVVM, MVI, Clean Architecture, Compose UI)
• Experience using Gradle and Android Studio
• Experience following and implementing software design patterns

System Design & Architecture

• Proven ability to design scalable, high-performing, and secure Android applications
• Experience integrating complex RESTful APIs and third-party libraries

Testing and Quality Assurance

• Strong experience in writing unit tests, UI tests, and automated tests using frameworks like JUnit, Espresso, and others
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitHub Actions)

Performance Optimization

• Ability to identify and resolve performance bottlenecks, including memory leaks, slow rendering, and network inefficiencies
• Skilled in using performance profiling and optimizations (e.g., Android Profiler, Leak Canary)

Leadership and Communication

• Ability to clearly articulate complex technical concepts to engineers, stakeholders, and executives
• Strong mentoring skills, with a track record of developing and inspiring high-performing teams

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience)
• 7+ years of professional software development experience, with at least 6 years focused on Android development
• Demonstrated history of leading and delivering multiple large-scale Android projects in a production environment with multiple scrum teams in an agile process
• Proven track record of architectural ownership and driving technical decisions
• Excellent interpersonal skills with ability to facilitate conversations with business partners in project definition, business requirements definition and functional design sessions
• Eye for quality and user experience
• Translate business objectives into software requirements

Desired Qualifications

• Hands on software development on the Android/Android TV/Amazon/Amazon Fire TV platform
• Have shipped one or more apps to the Google Play and/or Amazon app store
• Experience working remotely with globally distributed and multiple interdisciplinary teams
• Experience working on Android projects with multi-module architecture
• Experience with assistive technologies such as JAWS/VoiceOver, ZoomText, and keyboard-only input methods
• Experience evaluating front-end code against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
• Experience developing accessible front-end experiences with techniques such as TalkBack properties used in XML (labelFor, contentDescription), TalkBack announcements, dynamic text scaling, and responsive design

AI Literacy

• Hands-on, daily use of AI coding assistants such as Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or equivalent, with a clear sense of what these tools are good and bad at.
• Comfort writing effective prompts, structuring context, and evaluating AI-generated diffs critically before they land in the codebase.
• Working understanding of LLMs, embeddings, retrieval, and prompt engineering, enough to design client integrations and reason about latency, cost, and failure modes.
• Practical experience shipping or seriously prototyping at least one ML- or LLM-powered product feature (search, ranking, personalization, content understanding, in-app assistant, etc.).
• Judgment about responsible AI use: privacy, IP, attribution, and when a human review gate is required.

Bonus Skills (Nice To Have)

• Experience with Video Streaming (HLS / MPEG-DASH)
• Experience working with ExoPlayer
• Widevine DRM knowledge