Team Lead, Software Engineering

Who We Are:

Southern California Public Radio (SCPR) is a member-supported public media network whose mission is to strengthen the civic and cultural bonds that unite Southern California’s diverse communities by providing the highest quality news and information service on air at 89.3 KPCC, online at LAist.com and through KPCC In Person. Since our founding in 1999, SCPR has been a fast growing, innovative, multi-platform public service newsroom. Every day, our staff helps audiences catch up on the latest headlines, solve the complexities of life in Southern California, and connect curious communities to one another.

Position Summary:

The Team Lead, Software Engineering will serve as a key team lead on the SCPR digital product team, and work to lead, manage, and inspire a small digital engineering team in creating and delivering products across major channels and platforms as well as working to solve more complex technical issues when they arise. As a leader with a high degree of creative latitude, it’s important for this person to be comfortable with building process and policy within a rapidly-evolving media organization with very little direct supervision.

This position will be responsible for managing project goals, driving core platform strategy, leading all software architecture expansions and development efforts, and helping to develop and grow the team. This person will have strong verbal and written communication skills, can work effectively from a mixed remote and in-person organization, and can work well with stakeholders across the organization.

The ideal candidate is someone who is serving or has served in a senior-level software engineering role and is looking to move deeper into management while also still being able to take on hands-on development work when necessary. SCPR is not primarily a pure software development organization, but creative software and technological solutions will afford this individual a broad range of opportunities and projects both internally and in partnership with our regional and national journalism partners to further SCPR’s public media mission to serve the diverse audiences and communities of Los Angeles and rebuild trust in local news.

Position Responsibility:

– Serve as the primary engineering lead for the digital product team, working with project stakeholders, and non-digital station engineers to architect and strategize integration solutions.
– Develop deep knowledge of current digital infrastructure to understand how this integration will need to evolve over the next 5-7 years.
– Understand business and technology goals; present options and considerations in solution development and problem solving, being mindful of the cost/benefit prospect of developing quickly versus developing for long term sustainability.
– Scale SCPR integration strategies to outside organizations.
– Serving as primary POC for off-site managed services vendors to monitor and resolve any infrastructure situations quickly and efficiently.
– Mentor and manage a small team of full-stack and front-end developers.
– Serves as technical lead for SCPR with multi-station major action coalition, and serves as lead technical contact with digital leadership at National Public Radio.
– Other duties as assigned.
Required Education and Experience:

– Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience.
– 5-7 years experience to include the following:
Java, Javascript and/or other web-focused programming languages (full-stack capability is essential).
– Experience with developing headless front ends, working with APIs and API query languages such as GraphQL.
– Experienced in developing web and mobile APIs.
– Experience developing microservices using containers (Kubernetes, Docker).
– Solid understanding of AWS, including Lambda, RDS, EC2, ECS, Cloudfront, etc.
Required Skills, Knowledge and Abilities:

– Strong familiarity with devops infrastructure architecture best practices and configurations, cloud-based hosting environments such as AWS, and system issue remediation.
– Quick learner and ability to effectively multitask.
– Self-motivated with an innate curiosity around emerging technology and platforms.
– Ability to work under deadline pressure.
– Solid oral and written communication skills.
– Demonstrated ability to work in an interdisciplinary team environment.
– Ability to work independently with little supervision.
– Familiarity with communicating technical requirements and managing technical projects to junior developers.
– Familiarity with the unique demands and requirements of media organizations a plus.
Preferred Skills and Experience:

– Experience with streaming media and audio management platforms desirable (Stream Machine, Triton, HTTP Live Streaming).
– Experience in working with enterprise-level, consumer-oriented media websites and mobile programs a strong plus.
– Previous supervisory/management experience.
Reporting To This Position: 

Front-end developer
iOS mobile developer
Physical Demands and Working Conditions:

– Must be able to perform the essential duties of the position with or without reasonable accommodation.
– Ability to manage some work outside of standard office hours as needed.
– Physical Demands:
Required to move about in an office environment and sit for extended periods of time
Required to move about in the community
Frequent use of hands for data entry/keystrokes and simple grasping
– Working Conditions:
Moderate noise level
Diversity creates a healthier atmosphere: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, protected veteran status, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. 

We are committed to hiring a breadth of diverse professionals and encourage members of diverse groups to apply.