Role Description We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to serve as a technical anchor and force multiplier for our engineering teams. In this role, you will shape architecture, drive modernization, and cultivate a culture of engineering excellence — all while keeping a pragmatic eye on product delivery. You will bridge the gap between high-level strategy and day-to-day execution, ensuring that every iteration moves us meaningfully closer to our long-term engineering goals. Core Responsibilities - Technical Leadership & Architecture - Serve as "Anchor" (team lead) for one or more engineering teams, providing technical direction and accountability. - Develop architecture and strategy for features and projects, ensuring alignment with broader modernization goals. - Lead the adoption of new technologies while maintaining architectural cohesion across the platform. - Guide tech-debt elimination in parallel with feature development, balancing long-term health with near-term roadmap commitments. - Evaluate multiple approaches to complex problems and champion optimal, evidence-based solutions. - AI-Driven Development - Champion the team's adoption of AI-driven development practices, serving as the primary advocate and practitioner on the ground. - Design and build Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and AI skills that extend and integrate AI capabilities into the team's workflows and products. - Contribute to the broader AI tooling ecosystem, including AI-driven peer review pipelines, context retention mechanisms, prompt and memory management utilities, and other infrastructure that improves the efficiency and reliability of AI-assisted workflows. - Monitor and assess AI-driven development progress across the team, identifying opportunities to accelerate adoption and address gaps. - Apply AI to quality engineering — leveraging it to enhance test coverage, automate regression analysis, and surface risk earlier in the development cycle. - Use AI to analyze customer usage patterns, surfacing insights that inform product decisions and help the team build with greater empathy and precision. - Contribute to and help shape the company's AI-driven engineering culture — modeling best practices, sharing learnings broadly, and influencing how AI is adopted across teams beyond your own. - Mentor team members on effective, responsible use of AI tooling — from code generation to agentic workflows — helping them build fluency and confidence. - Adhere to and operationalize guidelines established by the AI Center of Excellence, ensuring the team's AI practices remain consistent, secure, and aligned with organizational standards. - Evaluate emerging AI development tools and frameworks, providing informed recommendations on what to adopt, pilot, or defer. - Engineering Excellence - Establish and model best practices in code quality, testing, DevOps, and software design. - Leverage peer review processes as a lever to raise the quality bar across the team. - Quantify engineering excellence and provide teams with clear capability roadmaps. - Stay current with industry trends and inspire the team to explore and adopt better solutions. - Collaboration & Communication - Drive deep understanding in technical discussions — going beyond surface-level involvement to uncover root causes and durable solutions. - Present complex technical concepts clearly to audiences with varying levels of expertise, from engineers to product and business stakeholders. - Understand customer motivations, needs, and frustrations within the context of both the technology and the broader industry. - Balance a commitment to technical excellence with pragmatic product roadmap goals. - Mentorship & Growth - Provide mentorship to engineers at all levels, fostering continuous growth for both individuals and the team as a whole. - Champion a culture of analytical and evidence-based decision making. Qualifications - 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including hands-on work with both strongly-typed and dynamically typed languages. - Proficiency across multiple technology stacks with a "T-shaped" profile — broad knowledge of modern engineering disciplines paired with deep expertise in key areas. - Demonstrated ability to modernize legacy applications and resolve complex architectural challenges. - Strong command of Domain-Driven Design (DDD) principles and software engineering design patterns. - Expertise in monolith decomposition strategies that maintain roadmap alignment and minimize disruption. - Well-versed in DevOps practices and quality engineering disciplines (CI/CD, testing strategies, observability, etc.). - Hands-on experience building MCP servers and/or AI skills, with a strong understanding of agentic workflow patterns and context management strategies. - Experience contributing to AI tooling — such as AI-assisted code review systems, memory/context retention utilities, or developer productivity infrastructure built around LLMs. - Familiarity with applying AI to quality engineering and customer analytics (e.g. test generation, usage pattern analysis, behavioral insights). - Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools (e.g. GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code) and a track record of driving their adoption within an engineering team. - Awareness of AI governance principles and the ability to apply organizational AI standards in day-to-day engineering practice. - A genuine enthusiasm for AI-driven development culture — someone who leads by example and helps others grow their AI fluency. - Proven ability to think strategically while executing tactically and operationally. - Skilled communicator with experience presenting to mixed technical and non-technical audiences. 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. Benefits - Cast & Crew provides a comprehensive package of employee benefits including: Medical, Dental, Vision, PTO, health and wellness programs, employee discounts, and more! - Note: Cast & Crew benefits are subject to eligibility requirements.