Sr. Backend Software Engineer (Video Engineering)

About Philo Philo offers all the best TV with one subscription and no hassles! Choose your perfect plan. Enjoy 70+ live channels, including AMC, BET, Hallmark, Lifetime, MTV, Nickelodeon, or get even more entertainment by adding a premium bundle with HBO Max, AMC+, and discovery+. No contracts. Sign up today! Essential plan: 7-day free trial for new subscribers. Watch 70+ live TV channels, including AMC, BET, CMT, Discovery Channel, Food Network, Hallmark, HGTV, History Channel, ID, Lifetime, MTV, Nickelodeon, OWN, We TV, and more! Explore 75,000+ movies and shows on-demand. Bundle+ plan: All the channels and library from Essential, plus: HBO Max Basic with Ads plan, AMC+, and discovery+ included. Free Channels: Stream 120+ channels of true crime, reality, comedy, Here's what Philo has to offer: Top-Rated Channels Subscribe to Philo, and you can watch over 70 top-rated networks live, including AMC, BET, CMT, Discovery, Food Network, Hallmark, HGTV, History Channel, ID, Lifetime, MTV, Nickelodeon, OWN, VH1, We TV, and so much more! Endless Entertainment Your next obsession awaits in the AMC+ library of captivating dramas, thrillers, horror, and more. Dive into binge-worthy series, fresh new flicks, and must-watch originals with access to discovery+ and HBO Max Basic with Ads plan—all included with your subscription. Add-ons like Movies & More, STARZ, and MGM+ let you enjoy even more premium content, including blockbuster hits, documentaries, and top shows. Unlimited DVR Curate your own streaming collection by saving your favorite movies and shows with the Unlimited DVR. You can save currently or recently aired content and rewatch your recordings for up to 1 year. Best of all, you can skip the ads! Free Channels Take Philo for a spin! Watch 110+ free channels of true crime, reality, comedy, news, and more. Save and record tons of content with the 30-day DVR and skip the ads. It's 100% commitment-free—no sign-up or credit card is required to start watching. www.philo.tv

Philo

Channel comfort.

TelevisionDigital mediaand Content delivery

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P

philo.com

51-200 employees

Entertainment Providers

San Francisco, California

2011

Privately Held

8.1k LinkedIn followers

• Video is at the core of Philo and what customers engage with the most: watching their favorite shows. The Video Infrastructure team is crucial for delivering on this high expectation, and — together with the Ads team — for generating significant revenue through advertising. We own the systems that get every frame of Philo to every screen: live and video on demand transcoding, DRM and license servers, manifest generation that holds up under peak live events, and Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI). We support playback across all major streaming platforms, and partner closely with the Ads, Client, and Data teams to build out the end-to-end video player and ad experience. We increasingly apply machine learning to inspect both content and ads — surfacing quality issues, optimizing encodes, and improving the viewing experience in ways that weren't possible a few years ago.
• Philo's video streaming infrastructure is highly distributed, horizontally scalable, and harnesses the power of cloud computing to deliver video at exabyte scale. Our video pipeline, developed in-house, uses industry-leading commercial and open source components to transcode, package in real-time, and generate HLS and DASH manifests on a per-user, per-session basis. The team also builds and maintains highly available RESTful web services that dynamically scale to meet the ever-increasing demands of simultaneous video streams across our platform.
• We are seeking an enthusiastic Senior Software Engineer to help us build and optimize the next generation of our video ingest, transcode and delivery platform. This is a high impact role that influences every video stream that Philo serves. If you endeavor to see how your work directly impacts end-users this is the role for you.
• Design, implement, deploy and monitor the next generation of Philo’s video streaming pipeline, using a combination of in-house technology and open source software.
• Collaborate with content partners to engineer systems that deliver the best possible TV watching experience for Philo’s users.
• Build scalable and resilient data pipelines for ingesting video and analytics events using distributed computing and micro-services architecture principles.
• Collaborate with internal stakeholders across video delivery, ad operations, and data science teams to ensure we are measuring and optimizing every aspect of our video delivery process and our users’ viewing experience.
• Drive continuous improvements to the reliability, performance, latency and security of Philo’s video streaming platform.
• Drive evaluation, selection, and development of video encoding technologies to optimize video quality and reduce CDN delivery costs.
• Assist our client engineering teams in testing and improving video streaming QoE as we develop Philo apps for several new platforms.

Required

• 8+ years of software development experience.
• Proven track record of building highly efficient and highly available software using Golang, Java, C++ or similar programming languages.
• Deep experience with concurrent programming.
• Experience building concurrent HA and high throughput RESTful web services.
• Experience operating in cloud computing environments using modern software deployment technologies (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes).
• Demonstrated ability to own and drive complex architectural/development tasks to completion by following Scrum/Agile methodologies.
• Experience working with large amounts of data and making data-based decisions to prioritize projects, including familiarity with relational and non-relational databases and modern data warehousing and querying.
• Experience and aptitude for collaborating and communicating with internal and external stakeholders in both business and technical roles.
• Familiarity with cloud video transcoding services such as AWS Elemental and Azure Media Services. Knowledge of FFmpeg is a plus.
• Experience building or integrating audio and video codecs such as AAC, H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC and AV1.
• Experience with video quality assessment tools such as VMAF, SSIM, etc.
• Experience with video streaming protocols such as MPEG-DASH, HLS, MPEG TS, fMP4, CMAF, Zixi, and SRT.
• Experience with OTT video packaging and DRM.
• Familiarity with Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI).

Preferred

• Experienced mentor with a talent for motivating, leading, and inspiring teams to achieve high levels of success.
• We are language agnostic, but most of our backend code is written in Golang, Ruby and NodeJS, with some C++ and Python. Our services run on Kubernetes, and we practice continuous deployment across all of our systems.
• At Philo, we’re a company that puts people first—both our subscribers and our team. We empower our colleagues to do their best work while supporting one another in pursuing shared goals. We value pragmatism, pride in our work, and passion, with transparency and openness as fundamental parts of our culture.
• Philo offers 70+ top-rated networks, including AMC, BET, CMT, Comedy Central, Discovery Channel, Food Network, Hallmark Channel, HGTV, HISTORY, Investigation Discovery, Lifetime, MTV, Nickelodeon, OWN, VH1, We TV, and more. It also includes all the groundbreaking originals and blockbuster movies available with AMC+ and access to HBO Max Basic With Ads and discovery+. Our service also includes 100+ free channels and premium add-ons like STARZ and MGM+.
• Our extensive library boasts over 85,000 titles, and our unlimited DVR allows users to save their favorite shows and movies for up to a year, skipping ads for a seamless viewing experience. Stream on up to three devices simultaneously, whether on your phone, tablet, laptop, or TV using Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, Samsung TV, Android TV, Vizio TV, or Chromecast.
• Philo is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in New York City and Cambridge, MA. Our leadership team includes alums from HBO, Tubi, and Meraki, and is backed by NEA and industry partners like Warner Brothers Discovery, Paramount, AMC, and A&E.
• Join us at Philo and be part of a team that's shaping the future of TV!
• Location: San Francisco, CA, Brooklyn, NY, Cambridge, MA, or fully remote within the U.S.
• Compensation: Includes annual salary, company stock options, and health benefits. Salary is determined by experience and location
• San Francisco, New York City: $195K - $250K
• Boston, DC Metro, Los Angeles, Seattle: $185K - $240K
• Denver, Atlanta, Austin, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Chicago: $175K - $230K
• Texas, Florida: $165K - $220K

• 401(k) plan with employer contributions (we match 100% of deferrals up to 3% of pay and 50% of the next 2% of pay)
• Flexible working hours
• Up to 20 weeks of fully paid parental leave
• Unlimited paid time off for vacation and sick leave
• $2,000 annual vacation bonus (we pay you to take a two week vacation)
• $5,250 annually for professional development and educational assistance
• $1,250 annual home office + TV stipend during first year of employment ($250 annually thereafter)
• $500/month ($6,000/year) bonus for employees who commit to working at least 3 days per week in our offices, plus generous commuter benefits ($315/month towards transit, rideshare, bike rental, or parking at our HQ office in San Francisco)
• Free Gympass subscription — an all-in-one corporate benefit that gives employees the largest selection of gyms, studios, classes, training and wellness apps
• Dog-friendly office
• And much more!
• For California Residents: Philo’s CCPA Notice at Collection – Employees, Applicants, Owners, Directors, Officers and Contractors
• A summary of the most recent independent bias audit of the automated employment decision tool used in this process, including the audit date and data source, is available here: Bias Audit Summary.
• Depending on your state of residence, you may have additional rights, including to an explanation of an adverse decision, correction of inaccurate data, and meaningful human review. To exercise these or ask whether they apply, email recruiting@philo.com.