Manager, Software Engineering

About Us

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, our technology, and our people has never been greater.  We are a production’s best ally every step of the way. #OneCastOneCrew

We are looking for a hands-on Engineering Manager to lead and transform a critical product engineering team. The team currently maintains a mature, revenue-generating platform built on legacy Java/Spring, JSP-based front ends, SQL Server stored procedures, and an aging reporting stack.

The Engineering Manager will own the full modernization roadmap — migrating from legacy Java/Spring to modern Spring Boot microservices, replacing stored-procedure-heavy data logic with clean application-layer code, rebuilding JSP front ends in React (or a comparable modern UI framework), and upgrading the reporting system from its current legacy tooling to a modern, maintainable stack. Simultaneously, they will stand up the SDLC practices, working with DevOps upgrade CI/CD pipelines, observability, and production support processes that the team needs to ship confidently and respond to incidents quickly.

Platform Modernization

• Lead the migration from legacy Java/Spring (non-Boot) to Spring Boot, establishing modular service boundaries, externalized configuration, and modern dependency management.
• Systematically refactor business logic currently embedded in SQL Server stored procedures into well-tested application-layer code, improving testability, portability, and developer comprehension.
• Define and execute the front-end migration from JSP pages to a modern component-based UI stack (React preferred), including API contract design between the new front end and back-end services.
• Upgrade the reporting system from its current legacy platform to a modern reporting solution, coordinating with stakeholders to preserve report fidelity while improving maintainability and performance.
• Establish architectural guardrails (ADRs, tech radar, code-review standards) that keep modernization coherent across the team.

Production Stability & Incident Management

• Triage and prioritize the existing backlog of production defects; create a transparent burn-down plan with clear ownership and SLAs.
• Implement a structured incident-response process: severity definitions, on-call rotation, blameless post-mortems, and follow-through on corrective actions.
• Drive root-cause analysis for recurring production issues and convert findings into permanent fixes rather than repeated band-aids.
• Establish production readiness reviews for all releases to prevent regression and reduce escaped defects.

SDLC, CI/CD & Engineering Practices

• Stand up a complete software development lifecycle: version-control workflow (branching strategy, PR reviews), automated build/test pipelines, artifact management, environment promotion, and release management.
• Introduce or mature CI/CD tooling so that every merge triggers automated unit, integration, and smoke tests before reaching production.
• Implement comprehensive monitoring and observability: application metrics, log aggregation, alerting thresholds, dashboards, and distributed tracing where appropriate.
• Define and enforce code-quality gates (static analysis, test coverage minimums, security scanning) in the pipeline.
• Document runbooks, on-call procedures, and operational playbooks so the team can respond to issues without depending on tribal knowledge.

People Leadership & Team Development

• Manage, coach, and grow a team of software engineers; conduct regular 1:1s, provide timely feedback, and support career development.
• Build a culture of ownership, continuous improvement, and psychological safety where engineers feel empowered to raise concerns and propose better approaches.
• Partner with recruiting to attract strong engineering talent — the modernization story is a selling point, so articulate the vision compellingly.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, QA, Data, and Infrastructure teams to align priorities and dependencies.
• Communicate progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly to senior leadership; provide regular, data-backed status on modernization milestones and production health.

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, including at least 2 years in a people-management or technical-lead role with direct reports.
• Deep hands-on experience with Java and the Spring ecosystem; direct experience migrating from legacy Spring (XML-config, WAR deployments) to Spring Boot.
• Strong SQL and relational-database skills, with demonstrated experience refactoring stored-procedure-heavy architectures into application-layer logic.
• Production experience with modern front-end frameworks (React strongly preferred; Vue or Angular acceptable) and familiarity with API-first front-end/back-end integration patterns.
• Track record of setting up or significantly improving CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and monitoring/observability stacks.
• Proven ability to manage competing priorities: simultaneous production firefighting and strategic modernization.
• Strong communication skills — comfortable presenting roadmaps and trade-offs to both engineers and senior business stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in payroll, financial services, or other regulated/high-accuracy domains where data correctness is non-negotiable.
• Familiarity with reporting-platform migrations (e.g., Crystal Reports, SSRS, Jasper, Stimulsoft, or similar) and understanding of pixel-perfect document generation requirements.
• Hands-on experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and cloud platforms (AWS or Azure).
• Familiarity with Agile/Scrum at a practical level — not ceremony for ceremony’s sake, but effective sprint planning, backlog grooming, and retrospectives.

#LI-JM1

Benefits

Cast & Crew provides a comprehensive package of employee benefits including: Medical, Dental, Vision, PTO, health and wellness programs, employee discounts, and more! Note: Cast & Crew benefits are subject to eligibility requirements.

Cast & Crew is an equal opportunity employer committed to hiring a diverse workforce and sustaining an inclusive culture. It is our policy to provide equal employment opportunities to all individuals based on job-related qualifications and ability to perform a job, without regard to age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, creed, national origin, disability, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship or marital status, and to maintain a non-discriminatory environment free from intimidation, harassment or bias based upon these grounds.

CA residents

Compensation is commensurate with various factors including, but not limited to, relevant experience, qualifications, skills, training, licensure, certifications, geographic cost of labor, and other business and organizational needs. Compensation range for candidates in other locations may differ based on the cost of labor in that location. The compensation range for this position is: $150,000.00 - $180,000.00 per year.