Sr. Backend Software Engineer (Video Engineering)

At Philo, we’re a group of technology and product people who set out to build the future of television, marrying the best in modern technology with the most compelling medium ever invented — in short, we’re building the TV experience that we’ve always wanted for ourselves. In practice this means leveraging cloud delivery, modern tech stacks, machine learning, and hand-crafted native app experiences on all of our platforms. We aim to deliver a rock solid experience on the streaming basics, while cooking up next generation multi-screen and multi-user playback experiences.

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.

• 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.

Ideal Qualifications:

• 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).

Bonus Points:

• 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.

More about Philo

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.

We’re committed to diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility as we grow the Philo team and shape the future of TV. We believe that a diverse range of voices and perspectives enables us to innovate faster and create the best experiences for our subscribers. Philo is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We’re committed to supporting every candidate and employee. If you need an accommodation at any stage of the process, please email [email protected] and we’ll work with you to meet your needs.

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, Viacom, AMC, and A&E.

Join us at Philo and be part of a team that's shaping the future of TV!

Projected Start Date: ASAP
Status: Full-time
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: $180K - $235K
• Boston, DC Metro, Los Angeles, Seattle: $170K - $225K
• Denver, Atlanta, Austin, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Chicago: $160K - $215K
• Texas, Florida: $150K - $205K

We value a diverse and inclusive workplace and we welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, skills, and perspectives. Philo is an equal opportunity employer. We believe that everyone does their best work when they are supported by each other and the company, and we offer a generous set of benefits to make sure the Philo team is happy and healthy. Here is a sampling of the benefits we offer our team:

• Full health, dental and vision coverage for you and your family
• 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

Pursuant to the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, we will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records.