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Backend Software Engineering Manager (Video & Ads Engineering)

San Francisco, CA, Brooklyn, NY, Cambridge, MA, or remote

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.

Backend Software Engineering Manager (Video & Ads Engineering)

Video is at the core of Philo and what customers engage with the most: watching their favorite shows. The Video and Ads teams are crucial for delivering on this high expectation and generating significant company revenue through advertising.

The two teams share infrastructure that transcodes content and ads and stitches the two together for seamless playback. They share the goal of quality video experience because ads are an integral part of the video playback. The ad team is innovating in the programmatic ad space and with home grown systems the two teams can rapidly innovate.

Philo's video streaming infrastructure is highly distributed, horizontally scalable and harnesses the power of cloud computing to deliver enough video to comprise single digit percentages of North American internet traffic. Our video pipeline, developed in-house, ingests both live and VOD content from our content partners, dynamically inserts ads into video streams using Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI), and optimally delivers them to our growing user base at exabyte scale. We use industry leading commercial and open source components in the transcode stage, paired with just-in-time packaging and our own ad stitcher that outputs unique manifests (targeting both HLS and MPEG-DASH) on a per-user, per-session basis.

As a Software Engineering Manager, you will lead the Video and Ads Engineering teams that underpin Philo, focusing on people management, project delivery, and fostering the growth of your direct reports. While a deep technical background in video streaming or application backend systems is essential, this role emphasizes managerial responsibilities, team collaboration, and career development.

Responsibilities:

  • Provide strong people management for the Video and Ads Engineering teams, including regular 1:1 meetings, career development guidance, and general check-ins to support individual growth and team morale.
  • Collaborate with technical engineering leads to gather feedback on project delivery, execution, and timelines to ensure efficient and on-time releases for our video ingest, transcode, delivery pipeline, and advertising platform.
  • Work closely with engineering leads to gather insights on code quality and areas for improvement, supporting continuous improvements in reliability, performance, video quality, and user experience.
  • Drive the professional development of direct reports, helping them grow their technical and leadership skills, and offering guidance on career progression.
  • Support team members with feedback on their performance, offering coaching and mentorship tailored to each individual's goals.
  • Facilitate cross-functional collaboration with product, ad operations, data science, and client engineering teams to ensure smooth and coordinated feature delivery.
  • Monitor the health of the backend teams by managing workloads, identifying bottlenecks, and maintaining a strong, transparent communication flow.
  • Advocate for team needs, including addressing tech debt and making decisions about project prioritization and resource allocation in collaboration with technical leads.
  • Manage the hiring and growth of the teams as needed, working with recruiting to identify and onboard top backend engineering talent.
  • Manage day-to-day partnership operations with content providers, CDN partners, and ad tech ecosystem partners to ensure optimal video delivery and ad performance.
  • Serve as a technical leader and advocate for the video streaming and advertising infrastructure, staying informed of industry trends and emerging technologies.

Qualifications:

  • 8+ years of backend software development experience, with significant focus on scalable backend application development, video streaming, OTT delivery, or ad tech infrastructure.
  • 4+ years of software engineering management experience, overseeing backend engineering teams.
  • Strong people management skills with experience providing coaching, performance feedback, and career development guidance to direct reports.
  • Deep experience building or leading teams that developed highly scalable, distributed backend systems using languages like Golang, Java, C++, or similar.
  • Experience operating in cloud computing environments using modern software deployment technologies (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes).
  • Excellent communication skills and the ability to collaborate across teams and disciplines to achieve common goals.
  • Track record of making data-driven decisions and working with large-scale systems handling significant traffic.

Nice to have:

  • Familiarity with Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) and programmatic advertising technologies.
  • Knowledge of ad tech standards (VAST, VMAP, OpenRTB) and programmatic advertising platforms.
  • Familiarity with video streaming technologies, including experience with video codecs (H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, AV1), streaming protocols (HLS, MPEG-DASH), and OTT video delivery at scale.
  • Experience with video quality assessment tools (VMAF, SSIM) and video encoding optimization.
  • Experience with cloud video transcoding services (AWS Elemental, Azure Media Services) and FFmpeg.
  • Familiarity with DRM, content protection, and video security.
  • Experience managing partnerships with content providers, CDNs, or ad tech vendors.

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 recruiting@philo.com 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 and Cambridge, MA. Our leadership team includes a Facebook co-founder and alums from Meraki and HBO, backed by NEA and industry partners like 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: $245K - $285K
  • Boston, DC Metro, Los Angeles, Seattle: $230K - $270K
  • Denver, Atlanta, Austin, Las Vegas, Sacramento, Chicago: $220K - $255K
  • Texas, Florida: $210K - $245K

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.

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