Software Engineer

Location & Interview Process

While we support flexible work and remote work this role is ideally based in the Nashville area. We value opportunities for in-person collaboration and are looking for candidates who are excited to meet collaborate and interview in person with the team as part of the process.

About Songtrust

Songtrust is the worlds largest technology solution for global music publishing royalty collection and administration. Our mission is to simplify music rights management and help songwriters publishers labels and distributors collect what theyre owedanywhere in the world.

Our platform manages a catalog of over 3 million songs representing 350000 songwriters including contributors to music by Drake Billie Eilish Kendrick Lamar and more. Songtrust works with leading partners like CD Baby Downtown Music Publishing Symphonic Distribution Sub Pop Publishing and Trap Nation.

Songtrust operates one of the most extensive publishing networks in the industry connecting to 60 global pay sources across 245 countries and territories. We are headquartered in New York City and owned by Downtown Music Holdings.

The Role

Were looking for a senior highly autonomous Software Engineer to take deep ownership of our core proprietary publishing and delivery services.

Youll be working on a mission-critical SQL-heavy Django system backed by PostgreSQL with a Django REST Framework API layer and a custom React frontend. The backend drives worker processes that handle business operations and processing at scale. Youll help deconstruct refactor and modernize this system as we evolve toward a service-oriented and microservices architecture. Over time you will become a subject matter expert in how the system works why it was built the way it was and how to thoughtfully improve upon it without disrupting production.

If you enjoy untangling real-world complexity working close to the data and building
systems where accuracy and trust truly matter this role is for you.

What Youll Do

• Take technical ownership of core in-house systems that power global royalty collection and reporting.
• Become a domain expert in our proprietary platform data models and publishing workflows.
• Analyze refactor and modernize a large SQL-intensive Django applicationincluding raw SQL materialized views multi-schema PostgreSQL configurations and complex ORM usage.
• Lead and contribute to the evolution from a monolithic architecture toward microservices APIs and clearer domain boundaries.
• Design and implement backend and frontend features using Python Django Django REST Framework PostgreSQL and React with an eye toward scalability and long-term maintainability.
• Build and maintain event-driven worker processes powered by AWS SQS and Lambda that handle catalog delivery file generation and transmission to global collection societies.
• Partner closely with product data and business stakeholders to translate complex requirements into durable technical solutions.
• Improve system performance reliability and observability using Datadog (custom metrics monitors as code dashboards) and Sentry in a high-volume high-integrity data environment.
• Write high-quality well-tested code and take responsibility for its long-term health in production.
• Champion best practices around documentation testing CI/CD (CircleCI) and infrastructure as code (AWS CDK).
• Mentor and support junior engineers through code reviews architectural guidance and shared problem-solving.

You Are / Have

• 5 years of professional software engineering experience ideally working on complex long-lived systems.
• Strong proficiency in Python and Django including Django REST Framework and the Django ORM.
• Deep comfort working directly with PostgreSQLwriting and optimizing raw SQL working with materialized views multiple schemas and read replicas. (This is not an ORM-only role).
• Experience with AWS services particularly SQS S3 and Lambda.
• Experience building and maintaining business-critical applications.
• A proven ability to refactor legacy systems and improve architecture without breaking production.
• Experience designing or contributing to service-oriented or microservice architectures including event-driven and worker-based patterns.
• Strong debugging performance profiling and systems-level thinking skills.
• Comfort operating with ambiguity and taking initiativethis role requires a true self-starter mindset with entrepreneurial qualities.
• Familiarity with modern development practices including CI/CD testing and documentation.
• A deep respect for songwriters copyright and intellectual property and an understanding that accuracy transparency and trust are foundational.
• A genuine appreciation for the complexity of the music publishing ecosystem.

Nice to Have

• Experience with AWS CDK (TypeScript) Docker and infrastructure as code.
• Frontend experience with React and TypeScript or equivalent modern frameworks.
• Exposure to OpenAPI/schema-driven API design (we use drf-spectacular) JSON Schema or Apache Avro.
• Hands-on experience with Datadog (StatsD monitors as code) or Sentry.
• Background in data pipelines ETL workflows or large-scale reporting systemsparticularly between PostgreSQL and legacy databases.
• Experience with CircleCI or similar CI/CD platforms.
• Familiarity with music industry data standards such as CWR (Common Works Registration) or CISAC codes.
• Prior work on financial royalty or high-integrity data platforms.
• Prior experience with secure coding practice and understanding of OWASP top 10.

What We Offer

• The opportunity to own and evolve services that drive core business operations used by hundreds of thousands of songwriters worldwide.
• A collaborative mission-driven team passionate about music and technology.
• A culture that values thoughtful engineering autonomy and continuous improvement.
• Comprehensive benefits including Medical Dental Vision Life Insurance and 401(k) with match.
• Paid volunteer hours and a strong commitment to inclusion and community.

Why This Role Is Special

This is an opportunity to become a subject matter expert in an established publishing business help reshape the foundation rather than simply inherit it. The systems that you touch will shape how millions of creators get paid accurately and fairly.