Tech Lead

At Cast & Crew, we’ve empowered creativity and supported the global entertainment industry for decades. Together with our family of brands—Backstage, CAPS, Checks & Balances, Final Draft, Media Services, Sargent-Disc, and The TEAM Companies—we operate as a combined entertainment technology and services provider offering industry-standard screenwriting accounting software, digital payroll products, data & reporting, and a host of creative tools. The industry continues to move faster than ever, and the need for our expertise, technology, and people has never been greater. We are a production’s best ally every step of the way.

About the role

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 lead our technical transition from shrink-wrapped and mobile applications development to becoming a cloud-based SaaS company. You will join an existing team of 13 full-stack software engineers (SWE), software engineers for testing (SDET), a product manager, and UI/UX designers building platform-agnostic client applications (Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android), multi-region redundant cloud-based backend services, and API-level access for third-party partners.

We adhere to Lean-Agile and SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), value independence and autonomy, and trust engineers to select the best tools for their tasks while collaborating toward common goals. We use Jira for project boards, task and dependency management, and DORA metrics to provide insight into our software development processes.

As Tech Lead, you will work on the entire system—front-to-back—including feature development, infrastructure, production reliability, and monitoring. While this is an individual contributor role, you will mentor engineers and provide code reviews. The role is approximately 50% hands-on coding and 50% leadership. Your work will directly impact our fast-growing community and be seen and used by millions worldwide. The Tech Lead reports to Final Draft’s Vice President of Engineering.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor the engineering team, providing code reviews that reflect acceptance criteria, robustness, style, and maintainability.
• Drive technical direction as we transition from desktop and mobile apps to a cloud-based company.
• Work closely with cross-functional teams to ensure projects are delivered on time and meet business and customer requirements.
• Ensure scalability and performance of our system to provide a seamless user experience.
• Partner with the product team to design and architect new features that enhance writer productivity and solve existing pain points.
• Plan infrastructure upgrades and address technical debt in collaboration with senior engineering members.
• Maintain best practices for platform uptime, stability, and responsiveness, implementing new policies as needed.
• Drive velocity and identify ways to increase it over time.
• Contribute high-quality code, working on issues and product features.

Requirements

• 8+ years of software development experience; a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science or related field is a plus.
• Deep expertise in cloud platforms like AWS (strongly preferred), Azure, or GCP.
• Recent development experience with cloud-based NoSQL (MongoDB preferred).
• Strong proficiency in TypeScript or JavaScript for backend and React, React Native, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for frontend.
• 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 Responsible GenAI, LLM, and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) implementation is valuable.

Special Work Conditions: Sedentary—Involves sitting most of the time but may involve walking or standing for brief periods. 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, and Vision coverage.
• Paid Time Off (PTO).
• Health and wellness programs.
• Employee discounts.

Note: Benefits are subject to eligibility requirements.

Pay

The compensation range for this position is $150,000.00 - $180,000.00 per year. Compensation is commensurate with relevant experience, qualifications, skills, training, licensure, certifications, geographic cost of labor, and other business and organizational needs. The range for candidates in other locations may differ based on the cost of labor in that location.