Lead Software Engineer - Roku

Lead Software Engineer - Roku

Location: On-Site - New York / Los Angeles / San Francisco / Ft. Lauderdale

About The Role

You'll own the technical direction of the Paramount+ Roku application — the platform, the patterns, the architecture. This is a hands-on leadership role where you write and review code and set the standard for a team of engineers shipping features to millions of viewers. Roku's constraints — tight memory budgets, a single-threaded render loop, hardware spanning five years of device generations — are the environment you thrive in, not just tolerate. You know these constraints well enough to teach them, and you'll lead a team through them.

What You'll Do

• Set technical direction for the Paramount+ Roku application — choose the patterns, own the architecture, defend the decisions
• Build and maintain core framework components and features — this is a hands-on role where you ship code
• Lead a team of Roku engineers through code reviews, pair programming, and feedback that helps people grow
• Architect around Roku's constraints: memory limits, render-thread/task-thread boundaries, device performance tiers, and certification requirements
• Ship real-time personalization features — personalized recommendations, dynamic artwork, and ad engagement experiences — within Roku's memory and threading constraints
• Drive adoption of RSG 1.3 data transfer APIs, BrightScript Memory Monitor, and Perfetto tracing across the team
• Scope projects, identify risks before they become blockers, and keep the team shipping
• Coordinate with Product, Design, Backend Engineering, and DevOps/SRE to translate requirements into plans your team can execute
• Write architecture docs, RFCs, and component guides so decisions are visible and durable
• Maintain and improve CI/CD pipelines, testing infrastructure, and build tooling
• Design and run A/B tests, then act on the results
• Use AI development tools to move faster, and help the team adopt them

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 quarter over quarter. They take on harder problems this quarter than last. You can name what changed
• You open a 200-file BrightScript repo you've never seen and start making changes the same day — and you've given your team the docs and context to do the same
• You notice a memory spike on a Roku Express before QA files a ticket. You fix it, write up what happened, and turn it into a pattern the team follows
• 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 and suggest a better one — 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

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years writing software
• 4+ years building Roku applications
• 2+ years leading a team or serving as a technical lead
• BS in Computer Science, a related field, or equivalent work experience
• Strong foundation in OOP, data structures, and algorithms — able to design systems and evaluate others' designs
• BrightScript and SceneGraph SDK, including RSG 1.3 — you can explain the tradeoffs between MoveIntoField, PostMessage, and CopyMessage without looking them up
• Deep command of the Roku threading model and where performance falls apart on low-end devices
• Roku frameworks and services: RAF, RMF, RokuPay
• Unit and integration testing on Roku — you've built test infrastructure, not just written tests
• RESTful API design, caching behavior, and CDN interaction
• Git and GitHub
• Strong technical writing — architecture docs and plans that people actually read and act on
• Active use of AI development tools (Copilot, Claude, Cursor, or similar) with concrete examples of how they've changed how you work

Desired Qualifications

• BrighterScript and Roku community tooling (ropm, bslint, roku-debug)
• Other OTT platforms: Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV, Samsung TV, LG webOS
• Observability tools: Conviva, New Relic, Datadog, Sentry
• Microservices and backend-for-frontend patterns
• Experience integrating personalization or recommendation systems into connected-device applications
• Experience with real-time or event-driven architectures on client platforms
• E2E testing for connected-device applications
• Docker and CI/CD tooling (Jenkins or similar)
• GraphQL
• Track record of introducing AI tools to a team — actual adoption, not just a demo
• You care about UX enough to push back on Product and Design when something isn't right
• You've worked across time zones without waiting for meetings to unblock yourself

Paramount is an equal opportunity employer committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace.