Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc

Software Development Engineer - Backend / Platform

Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc$160K — $200K *
Information Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent experience.
  • 5+ years of backend or full-stack engineering experience, excluding internships.
  • Proficiency in one or more backend languages (Java, Kotlin, Go, Scala, Python, Node.js).
  • Solid understanding of building and managing APIs (HTTP/gRPC/WebSocket).
  • Experience with relational and NoSQL databases in schema design and query optimization.
  • Familiarity with caching layers, message queues, and event-driven systems.
  • Experience with metrics and monitoring tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana).

Responsibilities

  • Design and implement microservices and APIs for core features.
  • Build scalable systems that ensure high availability and low latency.
  • Collaborate with media teams for seamless integration of backend systems.
  • Define data models and caching strategies to enhance query performance.
  • Implement monitoring and alerting for service reliability.
  • Work with frontend engineers to align on API contracts and error management.
  • Participate in architectural discussions and design trade-offs.

Benefits

  • Retirement plan participation.
  • Life and disability insurance.
  • Health, dental, and vision insurance.
  • Flexible spending accounts.
  • Vacation and personal time off.
  • Parental leave.
  • Employee stock purchase plan.
Full Job Description
Job Description

Tennis Channel is building a modern, scalable backend platform to power the next generation of our Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) experience across mobile, TV, and hybrid applications. As an SDE - Backend / Platform, you'll help build the core services behind live streaming, content management, personalization, analytics, and operational tooling that support millions of users across devices.

In this role, you'll design, develop, and operate backend systems using modern cloud technologies, distributed systems, microservices, and large-scale data platforms. You'll work closely with mobile, product, data, and infrastructure teams to deliver reliable, high-performing services that power the Tennis Channel ecosystem.

This is an opportunity to make a meaningful impact in a fast-paced environment where your work directly shapes the product experience. We're looking for engineers who are passionate about building scalable, maintainable software and have experience with backend platforms, cloud infrastructure, data systems, or media and streaming technologies. Experience in OTT, broadcasting, or entertainment is a plus.

In this role you wil...
  • Design and implement backend services (microservices, REST / GraphQL APIs, event-driven systems) to power core features: content ingestion, metadata, user profiles, personalization, video metadata, recommendations, etc.
  • Build scalable, highly available systems that handle high throughput and low latency requirements (e.g. for live events, real-time analytics).
  • Work with media / video teams to integrate backend systems for streaming, transcoding, content delivery (CDN), metadata synchronization, DRM, ad insertion.
  • Define data models, database schemas, and caching strategies to support queries at scale.
  • Instrument services with monitoring, metrics, tracing, alerting, and health checks; own reliability and observability for your services.
  • Collaborate with mobile / front-end / hybrid app engineers to define API contracts, error modes, versioning, and graceful degradation.
  • Participate in system design, architectural decisions, and trade-off discussions.
  • Improve developer productivity via tooling, infrastructure automation, CI/CD, build pipelines, and shared libraries.
  • Diagnose and resolve production issues, perform root cause analysis, and drive improvements in performance, resilience, security, and cost optimization.
  • Stay current with state-of-the-art backend technologies, cloud architectures, distributed systems, database systems, caching, streaming, and big data pipelines.

Key Qualifications
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or equivalent experience.
  • 5+ years of professional backend / full-stack engineering experience (not internships).
  • Strong experience in one or more backend languages (e.g. Java, Kotlin, Go, Scala, Python, Node.js).
  • Solid understanding of building HTTP / gRPC / WebSocket APIs, API versioning, error handling, and pagination.
  • Experience with relational databases (e.g. PostgreSQL, MySQL) and/or NoSQL (e.g. DynamoDB, MongoDB, Redis) along with schema design, indexing, queries, and query optimization.
  • Familiarity with caching layers (Redis, Memcached), message queues / streaming (Kafka, RabbitMQ, Kinesis), and event-driven systems.
  • Experience with metrics, logging, tracing (e.g. Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, OpenTelemetry).
  • Familiar with CI/CD pipelines, automated testing (unit, integration, contract tests), deployment strategies, and infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation, etc.).
  • Strong debugging, profiling, and performance optimization skills.
  • Excellent collaboration skills - you'll be working across domains (mobile, video, data) in a small, cross-functional team

The base salary compensation range for this role is $160,000 to $200,000. Final compensation for this role will be determined by various factors such as a candidates' relevant work experience, skills, certifications, and geographic location. Full time positions are eligible for benefits that include participation in a retirement plan, life and disability insurance, health, dental and vision plans, flexible spending accounts, sick leave, vacation time, personal time, parental leave and employee stock purchase plan.

#tennis

About Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc

Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. is a diversified media company and leading provider of local sports and news. The company owns and operates television stations across the United States, providing local news, sports, and other programming. Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. also owns a variety of digital media assets, including websites, mobile apps, and streaming services. The company was founded in 1986 and is headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland.
Learn more about Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc
Size
11,500 employees
Market Cap
$1 billion
Industry
Net Income
-$2.4 billion
Founded
1986
5 Year Trend
+18.5%
Revenue
$5.9 billion
NASDAQ

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