Platform Engineer - Backend & CMS Integration

Local Now is a free, ad-supported streaming service delivering local news, weather, sports, and lifestyle programming to viewers across virtually every connected device. As part of Allen Media Group, we operate at meaningful scale across mobile, smart TVs, streaming sticks, set-top boxes, and the web. We are now investing in a ground-up rebuild of our streaming platform with a privacy-first architecture, modern shared-code strategy, and the engineering rigor needed to grow sustainably.

We build for audiences who expect frictionless playback on any device, and for advertisers who depend on us to deliver reliable, high-quality monetization. The work is tangible: every improvement we make is felt by millions of viewers.

Local Now is a free, ad-supported streaming service delivering local news, weather, sports, and lifestyle programming to viewers across virtually every connected device. As part of Allen Media Group, we operate at meaningful scale across mobile, smart TVs, streaming sticks, set-top boxes, and the web. We are now investing in a ground-up rebuild of our streaming platform with a privacy-first architecture, modern shared-code strategy, and the engineering rigor needed to grow sustainably.

We build for audiences who expect frictionless playback on any device, and for advertisers who depend on us to deliver reliable, high-quality monetization. The work is tangible: every improvement we make is felt by millions of viewers.

We are hiring a Senior Platform Engineer to own backend services and content-management integration for the Local Now streaming platform. This role sits at the intersection of three things that matter most to us: the integration with our third-party content management system, the backend platform services that power every client app, and the privacy-and-data architecture that ensures we are good stewards of user information across every surface.

You will work alongside an experienced backend team (a director-level architect, a senior architect-engineer, and a senior engineer) to extend our platform services and harden CMS integration. The CMS integration in particular is load-bearing: every piece of content that reaches a viewer flows through it.

• Design, build, and operate backend services that abstract our content management system and serve content to client apps across many device platforms.
• Define and evolve API contracts for cross-platform client consumption, including content metadata, playback manifests, ad-decision endpoints, and personalization signals.
• Partner with the CMS vendor and internal stakeholders to integrate, troubleshoot, and extend content workflows end-to-end.
• Implement privacy-first patterns server-side: consent propagation, data minimization, DSAR plumbing, and PII handling at the platform layer.
• Instrument the platform for observability and operational analytics — error rates, latency, content-availability, and ad-decisioning performance.
• Work with frontend, platform, and ad-tech engineers to ensure the backend evolves in step with what clients and monetization actually need.
• Contribute to architecture review, code review, and the broader engineering bar of the team.

• 7+ years of backend engineering experience building production services at scale.
• Strong proficiency in C# and .NET Core, along with Go, Kotlin, Python, Type Script/Node, or similar, and the discipline to write services that are maintainable years from now.
• Experience integrating with third-party SaaS platforms — particularly those that own a critical part of the user-facing experience (CMS, identity, billing, ad-serving).
• Solid grasp of API design, distributed-systems patterns, caching, queueing, and the operational realities of running services in production.
• Deep experience with ad tech ecosystems, including server-side ad insertion (SSAI) with Media Tailor, beaconing, and integrating Ad SDKs such as The Trade Desk (UID2) and Spring Serve.
• Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including IaC patterns and secure-by-default service deployment.
• Awareness of privacy, security, and compliance considerations as engineering concerns, not legal afterthoughts.
• Excellent collaboration skills; comfortable working with vendors, frontend teams, and product partners simultaneously.
• Extensive experience with SQL, including writing stored procedures, and designing scalable analytics table structures.

• Experience integrating with a media-industry CMS…