Software Engineering Lead

Tech Lead

Final Draft is seeking an experienced full-stack Tech Lead with a deep understanding of complex cloud-based systems to provide technical and architectural leadership for our engineering team. In this role, you'll be leading our technical transition from shrink-wrapped and mobile applications development to becoming a cloud-based SaaS company.

You will join our existing team of 13 full-stack software engineers (SWE), software engineers for testing (SDET), product manager, and UI/UX designers who are building platform-agnostic client applications (Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android), multi-region redundant cloud-based backend services that powered them, and providing API-level access to our third-party partners. We adhere to Lean-Agile and SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), value independence, autonomy, and trust our engineers to pick the best tools suited for their tasks while working collaboratively towards the common goals. We use Jira to manage various project boards, task and dependencies management and tracking. We also use DORA metrics to provide insight into our software development processes.

As Tech Lead, you will be working on the entire system, front-to-back, including feature development, infrastructure, production reliability and monitoring. While this is an individual contributor role, you will be mentoring engineers and providing code reviews. The approximate division will be 50% hands' on coding and 50% leadership. Your work will have a direct impact on our very fast-growing existing community and will be seen and used by millions of people around the world in the future.

The Tech Lead will report to Final Draft's Vice President of Engineering.

Core Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor our engineering team, and provide code reviews that reflect acceptance criteria, robustness, style, and maintainability
• Drive technical direction as we move from a desktop and mobile app to a cloud-based company
• Work closely with cross-functional teams to ensure that projects are delivered on time and meet business and customer requirements
• Ensure scalability and performance of our system to provide a seamless experience for users
• Partner with product team to design and architect new features that will enhance productivity of our writers and solve existing pain points
• Plan how and when to upgrade our infrastructure and toolset, and address technical debt in collaboration with other senior members of the engineering team
• Maintain best practices to ensure platform uptime, stability, and responsiveness, and implement new policies as needed
• Drive velocity and identify ways we can increase velocity overtime
• Contribute high quality code of your own, working on issues and product

Key Qualifications

• 8+ years of software development experience; Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or related fields a plus
• Deep expertise in cloud platforms like AWS (strongly preferred), Azure, or GCP is essential.
• Recent development experience in cloud-based NoSQL (MongoDB is preferred) required
• Strong proficiency in TypeScript or JavaScript for backend and React, React Native, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the front-end.
• Experience with system design principles and patterns (OOP, functional programming).
• Knowledge of data modeling, REST APIs, and API gateway patterns.
• Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), microservices, and serverless architecture.
• Proficiency with infrastructure as code (IaC) tools and practices.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices.
• Knowledge of cloud cost management and optimization.
• Software development experience within the US-based Media and Entertainment industry.
• Familiarity with and background in Responsible GenAI, LLM, and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) implementation are valuable.

Special Work Conditions

• Sedentary – Involves sitting most of the time but may involve walking or standing for brief periods of time. Some positions may entail exerting up to 15 lbs. of force occasionally and/or a negligible amount of force to lift, carry, push, or pull.

Compensation is commensurate with various factors including, but not limited to, relevant experience, qualifications, skills, training, licensure, certifications, geographic cost of labor, and other business and organizational needs. Compensation range for candidates in other locations may differ based on the cost of labor in that location. The compensation range for this position is: $150,000.00 - $180,000.00 per year.