Lead Software Engineer

Storytelling is, and will always be, the heart of what we do at Skydance.
Our vision is to build a thriving entertainment ecosystem where stories and worlds are imagined, brought to life and experienced. We create for every age and audience, anchored by the strength of our content and experiences and the depth of our connection with fans. We are creator-first, audience-focused, tech-forward, globally scaled.

Here, you’ll work with talented teams that move fast, think boldly and collaborate with purpose to deliver results. We aim high, champion the best ideas and win together, earning the trust of our employees, creators, partners and audiences every day.

If you’re energized by the opportunity to help build the next-generation global media and entertainment company powered by creativity and technology, we’d be thrilled to welcome you aboard. LET’S GO!

Location: NY/SFO/Burbank – Onsite

About This Role

Welcome to Paramount Streaming — the team behind Paramount+, home to a mountain of entertainment for audiences around the globe. As part of a leading global media and entertainment company, we deliver premium content and unforgettable experiences across iconic brands including CBS, Showtime, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, and Pluto TV. At Paramount Streaming, we leverage one of the industry's deepest libraries of film and television content to power compelling streaming and digital video products. From platform innovation to global distribution and advanced advertising solutions, our teams are building the future of entertainment. If you're excited to work at the intersection of media and technology, we'd love to hear from you.

Paramount+ has been at the forefront of streaming innovation for over a decade, beginning as CBS All Access and evolving into what is now Paramount+. Our Apple team builds and scales the iOS and tvOS apps that deliver that experience to millions of viewers worldwide.

We’re hiring a Lead Engineer on the AI Engagement Engine team. This is a senior individual contributor role with no direct reports. You’ll build high-performance, user-facing features that power content discovery and personalization within the Paramount+ and Pluto TV applications, integrating real-time personalization signals and expanding personalized experiences across key touchpoints.

You’ll work with backend, ML, data, and platform teams to deliver scalable experiences across Apple platforms, own complex technical problems end-to-end, contribute to iOS and tvOS architecture, and partner with existing technical leadership on engineering standards.

AI fluency is a baseline requirement. AI-assisted workflows should be a core part of how you design, build, and review software, supported by a high-level understanding of inference, context windows, harnesses, and tools.

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership:

• Contribute to decisions on architecture, frameworks, and tooling for the iOS and tvOS apps in partnership with team leads and senior peers.

• Explore, evaluate, and implement new technologies to improve development efficiency and productivity.

• Evaluate opportunities to bring new technical features to mobile users.

• Translate product goals into technical requirements and break them down into shippable work.

Application Development:

• Design, build, debug, and deliver best-in-class native tvOS and iOS applications.

• Drive performance, reliability, and accessibility across the full app surface.

AI-Assisted Engineering:

• Use AI coding assistants and agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, or equivalent daily to design, write, review, and refactor code.

• Evaluate emerging AI capabilities and adopt approaches that improve engineering quality and productivity.

• Share useful AI techniques and workflows with teammates.

• Build client experiences for personalization and recommendation features in partnership with ML and backend teams.

Mentorship:

• Raise code quality through code review, design review, and pairing.

• Model good engineering habits, technical writing, and clear decision-making.

• Mentor and unblock other engineers without requiring a reporting line.

Cross-Functional Collaboration:

• Partner with product, design, data, backend, and other client teams to define, design, and deploy features.

• Cultivate strong working relationships with colleagues, customers, and company management.

• Communicate technical trade-offs clearly to engineers and non-technical stakeholders.

Process Improvement and Ownership:

• Work closely with your team to ensure the timely delivery of features and improvements.

• Manage concurrent projects and surface delivery risks early.

• Perform any other duties and responsibilities assigned by management.

Skills

Expertise in Apple Development:

• Excellent programming skills in Swift.

• In-depth knowledge of iOS and tvOS, and strong proficiency in Xcode.

• Strong programming fundamentals, including memory management, concurrency, animations, and performance profiling.

• Experience designing UI across size classes and device families.

• Experience consuming RESTful APIs and integrating with backend services.

AI Fluency:

• Understand core AI concepts at a high level, including inference, context windows, harnesses, and tools.

• Have working familiarity with skills and plugins, how they extend AI coding tools, and when to use an existing one.

• Write and refine prompts and context, and critically evaluate AI-generated output, including code.

• Have some familiarity with how LLM- or ML-powered product features are built.

• Exercise sound judgment around privacy, intellectual property, attribution, and when human review is required.

Architecture and Experimentation:

• Strong problem-solving and architectural skills at the app and module level.

• Experience with A/B testing, feature flagging, and client-side experimentation, including experiment assignment, holdout groups, and measuring feature impact within an existing testing framework.

• Experience integrating ad-serving products into Apple applications, including ad surfaces, impression tracking, and working alongside ad tech teams in a production environment.

• Working familiarity with ML-driven product features, including collaborating with data science teams on API contracts, identifying the signals clients should capture, and distinguishing between data, model, and rendering issues.

Leadership and Communication:

• Clear written and verbal communication with engineers and non-technical stakeholders.

• Ability to guide and support others in a technical capacity.

• Strong working relationships with peers, partners, and leadership.

Basic Qualifications

• 7+ years of Apple platform development experience, or equivalent senior-level depth.

• Hands-on experience using Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations and agent harnesses in engineering workflows, including validating outputs and troubleshooting failures.

• Experience as a key contributor to at least one publicly released native iPhone application.

• Experience working with Agile development processes.

• Demonstrable, current use of AI coding tools and agents in your day-to-day engineering workflow, and the ability to explain how they work to others.

Desired Qualifications

• BS/BA degree in a technical field such as Computer Science, or equivalent experience.

• Background supporting the integration of rich media assets, including video, into mobile applications.

• Experience building data-driven or server-driven UI, including personalized feeds, ranked content surfaces, and dynamic layouts, with pagination, prefetching, and cache invalidation strategies that keep content fast and fresh.

• Experience working with entertainment, games, news, or sports-related properties.

Bonus Skills (Nice to Have)

• Experience creating skills and custom agents for AI coding tools.

• Continuous build and test automation experience.

• Understanding of streaming video and DRM concepts.

• Knowledge of localization practices and tooling in Xcode.

• Experience with Swift Package Manager.

#L1-VA1

Paramount+, a direct-to-consumer digital subscription video on-demand and live streaming service from Paramount Global, combines live sports, breaking news, and a mountain of entertainment. The premium streaming service features an expansive library of original series, hit shows and popular movies across every genre from world-renowned brands and production studios, including BET, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures and the Smithsonian Channel. The service is also the streaming home to unmatched sports programming, including every CBS Sports event, from golf to football to basketball and more, plus exclusive streaming rights for major sports properties, including some of the world’s biggest and most popular soccer leagues. Paramount+ also enables subscribers to stream local CBS stations live across the U.S. in addition to the ability to stream Paramount Streaming’s other live channels: CBSN for 24/7 news, CBS Sports HQ for sports news and analysis, and ET Live for entertainment coverage.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Hiring Salary Range: $156,800.00 - 235,200.00. 

The hiring salary range for this position applies to New York, California, Colorado, Washington state, and most other geographies. Starting pay for the successful applicant depends on a variety of job-related factors, including but not limited to geographic location, market demands, experience, training, and education.  The benefits available for this position include medical, dental, vision, 401(k) plan, life insurance coverage, disability benefits, tuition assistance program and PTO or, if applicable,  as otherwise dictated by the appropriate Collective Bargaining Agreement. This position is bonus eligible.  

Skydance is an equal opportunity employer (EOE)

We embrace the opportunity to build a workforce that reflects a wide array of perspectives, backgrounds and experiences. Being an equal opportunity employer means that we take seriously our responsibility to consider qualified candidates on the basis of merit. In line with the laws of the country or region in which the role is based, this includes consideration without regard to race, color, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship status, religion or belief, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, pregnancy, parenthood, physical or mental disability, genetic information, military or protected veteran status, union status or any other category protected by applicable law.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability, you may request a reasonable accommodation during the job application and/or recruitment process. You can request reasonable accommodations by calling 212.846.5500 or by sending an email to [email protected]. Only messages left for this purpose will be returned.