WME is building the next generation of internal platforms that power one of the world s leading entertainment companies. The software we build helps agents and teams manage relationships, deals, and opportunities across the global entertainment industry.
We re looking for a Staff Software Engineer to take ownership of a major area of our platform. This is a senior ownership role rather than a senior individual contributor role. You ll be accountable for whether your area is staffed well, moving at the speed the business needs, aligned with product, and making deliberate architectural choices. You ll be working through the team leads who run day-to-day execution rather than driving that execution yourself.
Deep technical judgment still matters here. You can t set a technical bar you couldn t personally meet, and you ll make the calls that shape how these systems evolve. But the work happens a level up from the ticket queue, and the engineers who thrive in this role are the ones who find that shift energizing rather than limiting.
We re building this engineering organization largely from the ground up, so we re looking for people who enjoy scrappy environments, are comfortable navigating ambiguity, and want to help shape how a team operates. We re also investing heavily in AI-assisted development, and engineers here actively use modern AI tools and workflows to improve development velocity and product quality. We take the work seriously, but not ourselves.
What You ll Do Own an area of the platform. You ll be responsible for the outcomes of one or more teams working across a connected set of product surfaces. Scope is assigned based on business need and shifts as the org grows.
Keep leadership ahead of risk. Your manager should hear about slippage, resourcing gaps, or a bad bet before they have to ask. That includes pushing back if a timeline isn t realistic, or a product ask will create debt worth knowing about. Raising risk early is never treated as a failure here.
Give your teams context. Engineers in your area should understand why a priority exists, why a tradeoff was made, and why something changed. You re the connection between company direction and day-to-day execution.
Own technical health. Staffing mix, delivery pace, product alignment, and architectural direction all sit with you. A team can be fully staffed and shipping quickly while quietly accumulating problems, so tracking velocity isn t the same as setting the technical bar — you re responsible for both.
Own the roadmap. You should be able to articulate what your area is building over the next quarter and defend the sequencing on your own.
Grow leads. Identifying and developing engineers who can own execution is a core part of the job, not a side effect of it.
Hire. You ll source and interview for your own teams and weigh in on candidates joining them.
Partner with a technical program manager. You ll work alongside a TPM who runs planning cadence, cross-team dependencies, and operational execution. You set the direction and make the calls; they keep the machinery of delivery running, so you re not absorbed into it.
Make architectural calls. Including the uncomfortable ones. You decide where to take on debt and where to pay it down, rather than letting either drift by default.
Shape architecture beyond your own area. You ll work with engineering leadership and peer Staff Engineers on overall system architecture and the shared components that cut across products.
Example Problems You Might Own Designing systems that capture and connect relationships across the entertainment industry
Building modern CRM workflows that replace fragmented legacy tools and spreadsheets
Developing AI-powered features that surface insights from operational data
Creating APIs and services that support complex deal and workflow management
Migrating legacy applications into modern web-based systems
What We re Looking For Ownership and judgment Experience owning outcomes across multiple teams or workstreams at once, through leads rather than direct execution
A track record of surfacing risk early and pushing back constructively on unrealistic scope or timelines
Experience growing engineers into technical leadership
Comfort owning a roadmap and defending its prioritization
Hiring and interviewing experience
Comfort working where systems, processes, and org structure are still forming
Technical depth Extensive software engineering experience, typically 15 years
Strong full-stack background building modern web applications, with deep proficiency in React, TypeScript, and Next.js
Solid backend experience with Node.js, building scalable services and APIs (REST and gRPC)
Experience designing and managing relational databases, particularly PostgreSQL
Experience with cloud infrastructure; Azure preferred, including cloud-native services such as serverless functions, managed databases, queues, and blob storage
Containerized workloads with Docker and Kubernetes, and infrastructure as code with Terraform
Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and developer tooling (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or similar)
Strong product instincts and a collaborative mindset
How We Build Ship practical software that solves real problems
Favor simple, maintainable architectures
Work closely across engineering, product, and design
Use modern cloud infrastructure (Azure), Terraform, and containerized deployments
Maintain automated CI/CD pipelines to keep shipping fast and safe
Leverage AI-assisted development across the engineering workflow
AI-First Engineering AI tools are part of our everyday engineering workflow. We encourage engineers to use modern AI-assisted development tools to accelerate coding, testing, debugging, and system design, and we re actively exploring how AI can enhance the systems we build.
Per local requirements and in the interest of transparency, the rate shown below reflects the prevalent current hiring range for this position. Hiring pay rates are based on a number of factors, including location and may vary depending on job-related qualifications, knowledge, skills and experience. The company strives to provide locally competitive rewards packages, which include base rate along with, as applicable, short- and long-term incentives, growth and developmental opportunities, and robust benefits, such as health care, retirement, vacation and other paid time off, and additional offerings.
Hiring Rate Minimum:
$176,250 annually (minimum will not fall below the applicable state/local minimum salary thresholds)
Hiring Rate Maximum:
$235,000 annually
WME is an equal opportunity employer and encourages applications from qualified and eligible candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, or religion or belief.