Senior Software Engineer (Video) - KICK

Senior Software Engineer, Video - KICK 

About Kick

Kick is one of the fastest-growing live streaming platforms in the world. We are a global rival to established players, known for pushing boundaries and delivering cutting-edge viewer experiences. As we build a world-class ad platform from the ground up, we are seeking a brilliant, technically-minded professional to join us.

This is a pivotal moment in our journey. Our rapid growth is underscored by our recent milestone of over 1.1 billion hours watched last quarter, solidifying our position as a major force in the live streaming world. We are seeking a foundational team member who will be instrumental in the success of Kick Ads.

About the Role

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer with deep expertise in video streaming technologies to join our founding ad platform team. This role requires a candidate who has a proven history of working for a video streaming company and possesses a comprehensive understanding of the common causes of playback issues, such as buffering and failures. Your architectural insights and technical solutions will be crucial in optimising the performance and cost-efficiency of our streaming infrastructure.

The successful candidate will be responsible for implementing Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) for both live and video-on-demand (VOD) streaming. This is a foundational position, and you will be a key contributor to our core video platform, building and optimising the systems that power our global streaming experience.

Key Responsibilities

• Serve as a subject matter expert, collaborating with engineering, product, and operations teams to diagnose and resolve complex video-related issues.
• Architect, develop, and deploy a robust Server-Side Ad Insertion system for our live and VOD platforms, ensuring seamless ad delivery and a high-quality viewer experience.
• Analyse and address video playback challenges such as startup latency and rebuffering. Implement technical solutions both in player and service architecture that improve Quality of Experience (QoE)
• Contribute to the design and evolution of our streaming architecture, from encoding and packaging to content delivery network (CDN) integrations and playback logic.
• Provide input on technology selection, best practices, and future product requirements for our video and ad platform
• Hands-on coding, testing, debugging, and troubleshooting to ensure code quality, scalability, and maintainability.
• Write efficient, scalable, and maintainable code, adhering to coding standards and best practices.
• Lead and independently complete medium-sized projects or components from start to finish.
• Identify opportunities for improvement and take initiative in technical discussions.
• Share knowledge and best practices with the team, fostering a collaborative and learning-oriented environment.
• Collaborate with stakeholders, product managers, and engineering teams to effectively communicate technical concepts.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's/Master's degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience
• 7+ years of hands-on experience in video streaming software engineering, focusing on scalable system design and development
• Proficiency in multiple programming languages and frameworks relevant to the role (Go, PHP and/or React).
• Strong understanding of code architecture and design principles.
• Excellent communication skills for effective collaboration across teams and stakeholders
• Positive attitude and eagerness to learn new technologies to grow as a full-stack engineer.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.

Preferred Qualifications/Experiences

• Experience managing ad servers 
• Experience leading a support bridge in a live scale events
• Experience leading Incident Operations

Some of the perks of working for us:

• Champion Engineering Excellence to influence cultural change across the organisation.
• Work alongside the top 5% of engineering talent in Australia, using a vast cloud native tech stack including AWS, Microservices, Large-Scale Distributed Systems, Kafka, K8's, Terraform, Golang, ArgoCD, Datadog & Cloudflare.
• Exposure to building global, large-scale volume products which operate at thousands per second frequency (3 Billion Requests per day!)
• Access to over 9,000 courses across our Learning and Development Platform
• EAP access for you and your family
• Be rewarded with lucrative annual bonuses
• Give back with a paid volunteer day
• Fuel your day with daily breakfast and open pantries brimming with unlimited snacks and refreshments, all on the house
• Break up the week with on site remedial massage Wednesdays
• In house full-time barista’s providing you your daily coffee needs
• Weekly team lunches and happy hour in the office from 4pm on Fridays
• Enjoy a bustling office with the option for up to 2 days work from home per week
• Fun office environment with pool tables, table tennis and all your favourite gaming consoles

We believe that the unique contributions of everyone at Easygo are the driver of our success. To make sure that our products and culture continue to incorporate everyone's perspectives and experience we never discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, or marital, veteran, or disability status. We are passionate about providing a workplace that encourages great participation and an equal playing field, where merit and accomplishment are the only criteria for success.