Lead Software Engineer - CTV

Lead Software Engineer - CTV

On a mission to unleash the power of content… you in? We've got the brands, we've got the stars, we've got the power to achieve our mission to entertain the planet – now all we're missing is… YOU! Becoming a part of Paramount means joining a team of passionate people who not only recognize the power of content but also enjoy a touch of fun and uniqueness. Together, we co-create moments that matter – both for our audiences and our employees – and aim to leave a positive mark on culture.

Overview: You'll own the technical direction of Paramount's Smart TV applications across Samsung Tizen, LG webOS, and other CTV platforms. These apps run on web-based runtimes with tight memory budgets, limited CPU, and hardware that varies by model year and price point. You know these constraints and you know how to build React applications that perform within them. You'll lead a team of engineers, write code alongside them, and set the standard for how the team builds. You'll coordinate with central video engineering, external platform partners, and Product/Design to ship features that work on the biggest screen in the house.

Responsibilities:

• Set technical direction for Paramount's Smart TV applications. Choose the patterns, own the architecture, make decisions the team can follow
• Build and maintain application components using React and TypeScript. This is a hands-on role. You ship code
• Lead a team of Smart TV engineers. Run code reviews, pair on hard problems, give feedback that raises the bar
• Architect around CTV platform constraints: web runtime limitations, memory ceilings, rendering performance on low-end hardware, and platform certification requirements for Tizen, webOS, and other targets
• Ship real-time personalization features on Smart TV applications — personalized recommendations, dynamic artwork, and ad engagement experiences built for CTV constraints
• Collaborate with central video engineering teams to integrate and optimize video players across platforms
• Work with external platform partners (Samsung, LG, and others) to develop, debug, and certify applications
• Plan and prioritize technical work. Scope projects, surface risks before they block the team, keep releases on track
• Write architecture docs, RFCs, and technical guides. Make decisions visible so the team doesn't have to guess
• Improve CI/CD pipelines, testing infrastructure, and build tooling for multi-platform Smart TV deployments
• Use AI development tools to move faster. Show the team what works and help them adopt it

Required Qualifications:

• 8+ years writing software
• 3+ years building Smart TV or CTV applications on web-based platforms (Tizen, webOS, or similar)
• 2+ years leading a team or serving as a technical lead
• BS in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent work experience
• React and TypeScript at a level where you can design component architectures, not just use them
• State management with Redux and RTK. You've made decisions about store shape, middleware, and selector performance that held up at scale
• Client-side routing patterns (React Router or equivalent)
• Front-end fundamentals: HTML, CSS, modern JavaScript. You can debug layout and rendering issues on a TV runtime without guessing
• You've taken features from concept through delivery on CTV platforms, including certification and deployment
• CI/CD environments with DevOps and SRE principles
• RESTful API integration and data handling
• Performance profiling and optimization on resource-constrained devices. You know how to measure, not just improve
• You write and speak about technical decisions in a way that helps people act on them
• You use AI tools (Copilot, Claude, Cursor, or similar) and can point to specific ways they've changed how you work

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience with multiple CTV platforms (Tizen, webOS, Vizio, Xbox, PlayStation, or others)
• You've built or maintained cross-platform CTV codebases that share React code across Tizen, webOS, and other targets
• Browser internals knowledge: rendering pipelines, compositing, layout thrashing, and how these behave on TV runtimes vs. desktop browsers
• Video player integration experience (Shaka, hls.js, or native platform players)
• You've rendered personalized or dynamically served content on memory-constrained CTV hardware
• You've worked with real-time event pipelines or recommendation APIs on client applications
• Observability tools: Conviva, New Relic, Datadog, Sentry, or similar
• Experience working in Agile frameworks across distributed teams and time zones
• Rapid proof-of-concept experience. You've built throwaway prototypes to answer hard questions fast
• You've introduced AI tools to a team and helped them stick. Not a demo. Actual adoption
• You care about UX enough to push back on Product and Design when something isn't right for the 10-foot experience
• You say "I don't know" when you don't know

What Good Looks Like:

• Your team ships on time because you scoped the work correctly, not because anyone worked weekends
• Engineers on your team grow. They take on harder problems this quarter than last quarter. You can name what changed
• You open a Smart TV app codebase you've never seen, connect a Tizen emulator, and start diagnosing a rendering issue the same afternoon
• You know which React patterns cause jank on a 2020-era LG TV and which ones don't. You've written it down so the team knows too
• When a certification submission fails, you read the rejection, fix the issue, and update the team's checklist so it doesn't happen again
• You manage the relationship with platform partners. Samsung and LG engineers know your name and trust your team's submissions
• You write architecture decisions down. Six months later, a new engineer reads one and understands why you chose what you chose
• You push back when a plan has gaps. You suggest a better one. You do this without making people feel small
• You treat the build pipeline, test coverage, and error monitoring like product features
• You make the people around you better at their jobs. They'd say so if asked

Paramount is an equal opportunity employer (EOE) including disability/vet.