Staff Android (Exoplayer) Engineer

New York, United States (Remote)

About the Role

You'll own video playback across our Android footprint - mobile, tablet, Android TV, and Fire TV. This is deep media engineering, not general app development: ExoPlayer/Media3 internals, adaptive bitrate, DRM, and improving the QoE metrics that matter - startup time, rebuffer ratio, and playback failures.

As a Staff engineer, you'll set technical direction for Android playback, mentor senior engineers, and work closely with backend video, CDN, and data teams.

What You'll Do

• Own the architecture and roadmap for our Android playback stack (ExoPlayer/Media3)
• Improve ABR logic, buffering strategy, and track selection across varied networks and device tiers
• Lead DRM work: Widevine L1/L3, secure playback, offline downloads
• Drive support for HLS, MPEG-DASH, CMAF, low-latency streaming, HDR, and multi-codec strategy (H.264/HEVC/AV1)
• Build and maintain SSAI/CSAI ad insertion in the player, including beaconing and clean ad transitions
• Use playback telemetry (Conviva, Mux, or in-house) to diagnose and fix issues in production
• Debug device-specific problems: MediaCodec failures, DRM provisioning errors, codec quirks on low-end hardware
• Mentor senior engineers and set standards for the playback team

What You'll Need

• 8+ years of Android experience, 4+ focused on video playback
• Deep, hands-on ExoPlayer/Media3 expertise — you've built custom components (renderers, load control, track selectors), not just integrated a player view
• Strong grasp of streaming fundamentals: ABR, manifests, CDNs, and how encoding/packaging decisions affect the client
• Production experience with Widevine DRM and Android media internals (MediaCodec, MediaDrm, hardware decoder behavior)
• Experience shipping on Android TV and/or Fire TV at scale
• Fluent in Kotlin, comfortable in legacy Java player code
• Staff-level communication: clear technical docs, cross-team alignment

Nice to Have

• ExoPlayer/Media3 open source contributions
• Low-latency live streaming (LL-HLS, LL-DASH)
• Ad tech standards: VAST, VMAP, SGAI
• Casting/Chromecast experience
• Live sports or event streaming background