Staff Software Development Engineer (Backend)

Job Summary:

As a Staff Software Development Engineer in the VoD Video Engineering team, you will own and drive the architecture and delivery of critical backend systems that power our Video-on-Demand platform at massive scale. You will design and build the services that enables seamless ingestion, transcoding, packaging, and delivery of video content to hundreds of millions of viewers. This role sits at the intersection of high-throughput distributed systems, media processing pipelines, and cloud-native architecture — offering a rare opportunity to make a deep technical impact while shaping the future of video streaming at scale.

About the Team:

VoD Video Engineering team is the backbone of our streaming platform — responsible for the entire lifecycle of on-demand video content, from ingest and transcoding through packaging, storage, and delivery. We own mission-critical systems that process thousands of hours of video daily, serving a global audience with reliability, low latency, and the highest quality of experience. Our team operates at the forefront of media technology, collaborating closely with CDN, playback, and content operations teams to continuously raise the bar on performance and scalability. If you're passionate about large-scale distributed systems and the technology behind modern video streaming, this is the team to be on.

Key responsibilities

• Own end-to-end architecture and delivery of VoD backend systems — from content ingest, transcoding, and ABR packaging to metadata management and delivery orchestration.
• Design highly scalable, fault-tolerant distributed systems for video processing, ensuring high availability and low-latency content delivery at global scale.
• Lead the design and evolution of video processing pipelines including codec selection, container formats (MP4, fMP4), ABR ladder optimization, and DRM/encryption workflows.
• Define and implement APIs and microservices that integrate the VoD platform with internal services such as CMS, CDN, entitlements, and analytics systems.
• Drive technical strategy and roadmap for the VoD engineering domain, partnering with product and content operations to align engineering investments with business goals.
• Establish engineering best practices including system design reviews, code quality standards, observability patterns, and SLA/SLO frameworks for production systems.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (streaming, playback, data engineering, DevOps) to deliver seamless end-to-end user experiences.
• Identify and drive performance improvements — optimizing throughput, reducing processing costs, and improving time-to-publish for new content.
• Mentor and grow senior and mid-level engineers; lead design discussions, architecture reviews, and knowledge-sharing initiatives across the team.
• Champion reliability engineering: drive incident response, post-mortem culture, and system resilience improvements across the VoD stack.

Skills and attributes for success:

• 7+ years of professional backend software engineering experience, with at least 3+ years in large-scale distributed systems or media/streaming platform roles.
• Expert-level proficiency in Go, Python, or Java with a strong command of software engineering fundamentals, design patterns, and performance optimization.
• Understanding of video processing technologies: codecs (H.264, H.265/HEVC, AV1), container formats (MP4, fMP4, CMAF), and adaptive bitrate streaming protocols (HLS, MPEG-DASH).
• Strong proficiency in distributed systems design — message queues (Kafka, SQS), workflow orchestration (Airflow, Step Functions), and event-driven architectures.
• Experience with cloud infrastructure (AWS, or GCP) and containerized deployments using Kubernetes and Docker in production environments.
• Proficiency with observability and monitoring tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, Datadog) and experience building production-grade reliability practices.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and ability to take ownership of complex technical challenges
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across technical and non-technical teams

Preferred education and experience:

• Bachelors/master's in computer science or a related field with 7-9 years of professional experience
• BE/B.Tech in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent. MS or PhD a plus

About JioStar

Perched at the nucleus of spellbinding content and innovative technology, JioStar is a leading global media & entertainment company that is reimagining the way audiences consume entertainment and sports. Its television network and streaming service together reach more than 750 million viewers every week, igniting the dreams and aspirations of hundreds of million people across geographies.

JioStar is an equal opportunity employer. The company values diversity and its mission is to create a workplace where everyone can bring their authentic selves to work. The company ensures that the work environment is free from any discrimination against persons with disabilities, gender, gender identity and any other characteristics or status that is legally protected.