Principal Engineer - job 1 of 4

NBCUniversal is one of the world's leading media and entertainment companies. We create world-class content, which we distribute across our portfolio of film, television, and streaming, and bring to life through our theme parks and consumer experiences. We own and operate leading entertainment and news brands, including NBC, NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC, NBC Sports, Telemundo, NBC Local Stations, Bravo, USA Network, and Peacock, our premium ad-supported streaming service. We produce and distribute premier filmed entertainment and programming through Universal Filmed Entertainment Group and Universal Studio Group, and have world-renowned theme parks and attractions through Universal Destinations & Experiences. NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation.

Our impact is rooted in improving the communities where our employees, customers, and audiences live and work. We have a rich tradition of giving back and ensuring our employees have the opportunity to serve their communities. We champion an inclusive culture and strive to attract and develop a talented workforce to create and deliver a wide range of content reflecting our world.

Comcast NBCUniversal has announced its intent to create a new publicly traded company ('Versant') comprised of most of NBCUniversal's cable television networks, including USA Network, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, E!, SYFY and Golf Channel along with complementary digital assets Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow, GolfPass, and SportsEngine. The well-capitalized company will have significant scale as a pure-play set of assets anchored by leading news, sports and entertainment content. The spin-off is expected to be completed during 2025.

Versant Media is seeking a highly accomplished Principal Web & Content Supply Chain Engineer to serve as the chief technical authority and architectural leader for our Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) applications, public-facing websites, APIs, and critical internal Content Management Systems (CMS). This role is centered on defining the standards, governance, and technical implementation required to deliver high-performance, reliable, and secure digital experiences across our premium News, Sports, and Entertainment brands, ensuring a seamless flow of content from creation to consumption.

Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

Architectural Leadership & Strategy

• Define DTC Architecture: Lead the strategic development and implementation of the application architecture for all consumer-facing DTC properties (websites, APIs), focusing on scalability, performance, security, and maintainability, with a mandate to achieve and maintain aggressive Service Level Objectives (SLOs).
• Establish a Center of Excellence: Act as the subject matter expert, setting the technical standards, coding best practices, and governance playbooks for all engineering teams building and supporting Versant Media's digital applications.
• Performance & Observability: Own the strategy for application observability, logging, monitoring, and alerting. Drive initiatives to maximize page load speed, Core Web Vitals (CWV), and overall application health through deep analysis and optimization of data-intensive operations.

Content Supply Chain & CMS Integration

• Content Management System (CMS) Ownership: Serve as the technical lead for our CMS architecture, defining the integration points, API specifications, and workflow logic to ensure a seamless, efficient content publishing pipeline, including support for user-generated content workflows.
• API Design & Governance: Define the architecture and standards for all public-facing and internal APIs that power the DTC apps, ensuring they are robust, performant, and correctly versioned, leveraging experience on an Architecture Council.
• Front-to-Back Integration: Oversee the technical integration between the core content repositories (CMS/MAM), microservices, and the final presentation layers across all web properties.

Engineering Practices & Governance

• CI/CD Pipeline & Delivery: Define and optimize the Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines for front-end and back-end services, promoting frequent, high-quality, and automated releases.
• Security & Compliance: Establish and enforce security best practices across all DTC codebases and infrastructure, ensuring compliance with industry standards and internal policies.
• Mentorship & Code Review: Provide senior mentorship to engineering teams and conduct high-level technical design and code reviews across multiple systems to ensure alignment with architectural standards.

Application Modernization & Technical Leadership

• System Modernization & Redesign: Lead the architectural redesign and replacement of core systems and legacy technology components, including writing technical designs and proposals to sunset old tech and achieve strategic modernization goals.
• Technical Debt & Upgrades: Champion efforts for technical debt elimination and lead major platform version upgrades across the digital application ecosystem.
• Innovation & Future-Proofing: Drive the continuous evolution of our technology stack through the evaluation and adoption of modern frameworks, cloud-native services, and engineering patterns.

The Person

The ideal candidate possesses deep, proven experience architecting, building, and operating high-traffic digital platforms and robust content supply chains.

• Proven experience with web application architecture, software engineering, and managing large-scale, consumer-facing digital platforms.
• Expert-level knowledge of modern web technologies, including TypeScript/JavaScript, and fluency in multiple back-end languages such as Python, Go, and Node.
• Deep expertise in Content Management Systems (CMS) architecture, schema design, workflow modeling, and integrating decoupled CMS solutions.
• Proven ability to design, document, and govern scalable, high-volume APIs (RESTful/GraphQL) and experience using a variety of datastores including PostgreSQL, Dynamo, Redis, and ElasticSearch.
• Strong understanding of cloud-native development (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure), modern deployment strategies, and CI/CD best practices.
• A track record of success in optimizing application performance to achieve high SLOs (e.g., 99.99%) by implementing targeted caching, database optimization, and improving asynchronous call patterns.

Additional Requirements: 

• Hybrid: This position has been designated as hybrid, generally contributing from the office a minimum of three days per week.

This position is eligible for company sponsored benefits, including medical, dental and vision insurance, 401(k), paid leave, tuition reimbursement, and a variety of other discounts and perks. Learn more about the benefits offered by NBCUniversal by visiting the Benefits page of the Careers website. Salary range: $170,000 - $200,000 (bonus eligible) 

We are accepting applications for this position on an ongoing basis. 

As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with an NBCUniversal employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. NBCUniversal's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. You can submit your request to [email protected].

Although you'll be hired as an NBCU employee, your employment and the responsibilities associated with this job likely will transition to Versant in the future. By joining at this pivotal time, you'll be a part of this exciting company as it takes shape.