Senior Staff Software Engineer

Description

The CNN New Business Engineering team is building a new set of standalone consumer lifestyle products for mobile and web. The goal is non-news experiences that improve users' daily lives, strengthen their everyday engagement with CNN, and support long-term growth of the direct-to-consumer business.

The role covers customer-facing web applications, shared backend services and the content management platform, all of which feed both web and mobile products. You will work with Engineering, Product, Design, Editorial and other CNN teams to set architecture, shape technical strategy, lead rapid prototypes, write production code and guide delivery of scalable software across several products.

This is a chance to shape the technical base of CNN's next consumer portfolio from the start. You will guide architecture across several engineering teams, build reusable platform capabilities, use AI to speed up development and help ship experiences for millions of users. The role suits someone who enjoys building 0-to-1 products, tackling hard technical problems and holding a high standard for engineering quality.

Responsibilities

• Set, explain and refine the architecture for customer-facing web apps, shared backend services and CMS capabilities so they match business goals and the long-term technical direction.
• Lead technical work across the development lifecycle: architecture reviews, software design, hands-on coding, code reviews, documentation and mentoring.
• With New Business engineering leadership, set the long-term technical strategy, architecture roadmap and platform direction for CNN New Business.
• Shape technical decisions across several engineering teams and build close working relationships with Business, Product, Design and Editorial so the customer experience holds together.
• Lead rapid prototyping and technical exploration to test new product ideas and speed up 0-to-1 development.
• Set standards for architecture, code quality, testing, observability, reliability, security and operational readiness.
• Mentor engineers, take part in technical hiring and raise the technical skill of the wider engineering organization.
• Lead the adoption of AI-assisted engineering, finding ways to raise developer productivity and build better customer experiences with AI.

Requirements

• A bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field, or equivalent industry experience.
• 15+ years of software engineering work, including 5+ years designing and building large-scale web applications and leading architecture for complex systems, with at least 2 years in a role where you defined and led architecture.
• A drive for high performance in a fast-moving agile setting, prioritising quick customer value over a perfect solution.
• Strong verbal and written communication, able to persuade both technical and non-technical stakeholders across the company.
• A collaborative leadership style that lifts others up and a willingness to share your knowledge with every team.
• Experience designing reusable components and platform capabilities that speed up work across several consumer products and teams.
• Strong full-stack experience with modern web technologies and frameworks, such as JavaScript/TypeScript, HTML/CSS, Python and Go.
• Deep experience building highly scalable web applications, with hands-on work on both client and server sides. Solid grasp of reliability, availability, security, privacy, analytics, observability and operational readiness.
• Deep expertise in cloud-native architecture and in designing, deploying and running systems on AWS (strongly preferred), GCP or Azure.
• Solid knowledge of operations, CI/CD and DevOps.

Conditions

Equal opportunity: candidates with a disability who need adjustments during the application or recruitment process can request them through the accessibility page.