Lead Software Engineer - Backend (.NET) About The Role Cast & Crew is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to take technical ownership of critical backend systems at the heart of our entertainment payroll platform. This is a hands-on individual contributor role - you will not manage headcount, but you will lead: setting technical direction, driving architectural decisions, and raising the engineering bar across the team through influence, example, and deep expertise. Our systems are a mix of modern .NET microservices and mature legacy platforms that process payroll for productions of every scale in the entertainment industry. The person we're looking for understands that legacy doesn't mean broken - it means earned complexity - and approaches modernization with pragmatism, not ideology. You will own difficult problems from design through delivery, and your work will directly shape the reliability and evolution of systems that tens of thousands of people in the industry depend on. What You'll Do • Drive architecture and technical design for backend microservices - leading design reviews, authoring technical specs, and making defensible trade-off decisions that balance modernization goals with operational stability (~25%) • Lead modernization initiatives: decompose legacy monoliths into well-scoped microservices, migrate aging components to modern .NET, and incrementally improve system quality without disrupting what is working in production (~25%) • Own complex feature development and critical bug resolution end-to-end - from requirements clarity through implementation, testing, and deployment (~20%) • Set and uphold engineering standards: code quality, testing discipline (unit, integration, contract), and documentation practices across the team (~15%) • Provide technical mentorship and informal leadership - conducting thorough code reviews, unblocking teammates, and helping junior and mid-level engineers grow without creating dependencies on yourself (~10%) • Collaborate cross-functionally with product, QA, DevOps, and architecture to ensure technical decisions are well-understood, well-scoped, and delivered on time (~5%) What We're Looking For • 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong foundation in .NET / C# - deep knowledge of the runtime, async patterns, dependency injection, and production-grade service design • Proven ability to modernize legacy systems - you have navigated real migrations or refactors of complex, long-lived codebases and know how to do so incrementally and safely • Deep microservices expertise: service decomposition, REST API design, inter-service communication patterns, distributed data consistency, fault tolerance, and the judgment to know when simpler is right • Solid relational database expertise - schema design, query optimization, transaction management, and performance tuning at scale (SQL Server, PostgreSQL, or DB2) • Informal technical leadership: demonstrated ability to influence technical direction, align a team around an approach, and elevate others without the leverage of a management title • Delivery ownership mindset - you define scope clearly, identify risks early, communicate blockers proactively, and ship • Java proficiency is acceptable in lieu of deep .NET background for candidates who can demonstrate rapid platform adaptation and strong fundamentals • Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent professional experience Nice to Have • Familiarity with DevOps practices: CI/CD pipeline design, containerization (Docker/Kubernetes), infrastructure-as-code, or observability tooling • Exposure to event-driven architecture (Kafka, RabbitMQ, or Azure Service Bus) or gRPC for inter-service communication • Some working knowledge of C - comfort reading and reasoning about C codebases is a plus in our mixed-technology environment • Hands-on experience using Generative AI tools (GitHub Copilot, Claude, etc.) as a genuine accelerant in daily development work • Familiarity with Python or test automation frameworks (Robot Framework, Playwright, etc.) • Experience in payroll, financial systems, or other high-compliance domains Why Join Us For over 45 years, Cast & Crew has been the infrastructure of entertainment - handling the payroll, labor compliance, and production management that keeps Hollywood and beyond running. Our engineering team sits at a fascinating inflection point: we maintain and evolve systems that are mature, mission-critical, and deeply trusted, while also modernizing toward a more flexible, cloud-native microservices architecture. This is the kind of role that's rare in the market: genuine technical leadership scope, real legacy complexity that will sharpen your engineering judgment, and a team small enough that your decisions visibly matter. You won't spend your days navigating bureaucracy or re-platforming greenfield apps with no history. You'll wrestle with real constraints, earn real trust, and build things that last. We offer competitive compensation, a collaborative engineering culture, strong benefits, and the chance to become a cornerstone technical voice in an organization that has supported the entertainment industry for decades. 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. 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: $160,000.00 - $180,000.00 per year.