Principal Software Engineer - Subscription & Paywall Platforms

About the Role

This role sits within the Enterprise Technology organization and is responsible for defining technical strategy, driving cross-team architecture decisions, and ensuring the long-term scalability, reliability, and performance of critical revenue-generating systems. As Principal Software Engineer, you will be an individual contributor responsible for leading the architecture, evolution, and scaling of our subscription and paywall platforms that power both B2C and B2B digital products.

You will partner closely with Engineering, Product, Data, and Business stakeholders to solve complex technical challenges, influence engineering strategy, and drive execution on initiatives that span multiple systems and domains. You will also provide technical mentorship to engineers across the organization and help establish architectural standards and engineering best practices. You will report to the Director of Engineering.

Our Technology team drives the evolution of our Technology, Engineering, Data, Product and User Experience functions. With a keen focus on delivering cutting‑edge solutions, we shape the digital landscape for our customers, readers and users. From revolutionizing visuals to optimizing tools and harnessing the power of data, mobile, video and social platforms, our team is committed to providing a seamless and immersive experience across all touchpoints.

Collaborating closely with our newsrooms and strategic partners, we spearhead the development of groundbreaking products and technologies.

• Define and drive the technical vision, architecture, and long‑term roadmap for subscription, entitlement, identity, billing, and paywall platforms supporting both consumer and enterprise customers.
• Lead the design and delivery of scalable full‑stack solutions, influencing technical direction across multiple teams while making architectural decisions that improve reliability, performance, security, and developer productivity.
• Act as a senior technical advisor and mentor, raising engineering standards through design reviews, technical guidance, and hands‑on leadership in solving the organization’s most complex engineering challenges.
• Serve as the technical escalation point for the organization’s most complex production challenges, rapidly diagnosing cross‑system issues and coordinating solutions across multiple engineering teams and platforms.
• Own the end‑to‑end delivery of high‑impact platform investments, maintaining a hands‑on role in architecture, coding, implementation, and operational readiness from inception through successful production launch and adoption.

• At least 12 years’ professional software engineering experience in which you were responsible for large‑scale platform architecture and technical leadership.
• Experience in digital media, publishing, SaaS, streaming, e‑commerce, or other subscription‑driven businesses which included paywall management systems.
• Deep expertise in full‑stack software development, including modern front‑end technologies (React, Angular, Type Script, or similar), NodeJS, backend services, APIs, distributed systems, SQL/No
  
  SQL Databases and cloud‑native architectures.
• Proven experience building and operating subscription management, paywall, entitlement, identity, account, or recurring revenue platforms at scale.
• Experience applying AI and machine learning to subscription businesses.
• Strong background in software architecture, microservices, event‑driven systems, API design, data architecture, cloud platforms, and engineering practices supporting high‑availability production environments.
• Demonstrated ability to influence technical strategy, align multiple engineering teams, and successfully lead cross‑functional initiatives.
• Experience supporting large‑scale subscription, entitlement, identity or paywall platforms in production.
• Demonstrated ability to independently own the delivery of complex platform capabilities from technical design through production launch.
• Experience with experimentation platforms, personalization systems, pricing optimization, customer lifecycle management, or enterprise licensing and access management solutions.