Lead Software Engineer

Paramount

• We’ve got the brands, we’ve got the stars, we’ve got the power to achieve our mission to entertain the planet – now all we’re missing is… YOU! Becoming a part of Paramount means joining a team of passionate people who who not only recognize the power of content but also enjoy a touch of fun and uniqueness. Together, we co-create moments that matter – both for our audiences and our employees – and aim to leave a positive mark on culture.

As the Lead Live Event Technology Engineer, you will own the technical escalation function for Paramount+'s global Live Event Operations team, setting the standard for how Tier-1 live streaming events are supported, diagnosed, and recovered. You are the senior technical authority when a high-profile broadcast is at risk, and the person who makes sure the same problem doesn't happen twice.

This role goes beyond resolving incidents. You will lead technical investigations across the end-to-end live streaming ecosystem (acquisition, encoding, packaging, delivery, playback, advertising, and platform integrations), direct cross-functional response with Engineering, Product, CDN providers, cloud vendors, and distribution partners, and drive the systemic improvements that raise the reliability bar for the entire platform. You will also mentor and develop engineers and operators, shape operational standards, and influence the roadmap for live streaming tooling, monitoring, and architecture.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical leadership and escalation

• Serve as the senior technical escalation authority for the Live Event Operations team during Tier-1 live events, making high-stakes mitigation calls in real time.

• Lead technical bridge calls during critical incidents, directing engineers and partners, communicating impact and recovery status to leadership, and owning the decision path through resolution.

• Guide Live Event Operators during event execution, validating mitigation actions and building their technical judgment over time.

• Deep technical investigation

• Diagnose complex, service-impacting issues across contribution feeds, cloud encoding, packaging, DRM, origin, CDN delivery, playback, and client applications.

• Perform detailed analysis using streaming manifests, player logs, encoder metrics, QoS/QoE analytics, SCTE-35 signaling, transport stream analysis, and cloud monitoring tools.

• Reliability and continuous improvement

• Own the post-event RCA program: run root cause reviews, identify systemic and recurring failure patterns, and drive corrective actions to completion with Engineering and Product.

• Define and lead pre-event readiness standards, including technical validation, redundancy verification, workflow testing, and production readiness reviews for major events.

• Partner with Engineering and Product to shape architecture, failover strategy, and observability improvements based on what live events reveal.

• Vendor and partner ownership

• Manage technical relationships with CDN providers, cloud vendors, and distribution partners, including escalation paths, performance expectations, and issue resolution.

• Lead evaluation, certification, onboarding, and production rollout of new streaming technologies, cloud workflows, monitoring tools, and vendor integrations.

• Team and operational excellence

• Mentor and coach engineers and operators; raise the technical depth of the broader Live Event Operations team.

• Establish and maintain troubleshooting documentation, operational runbooks, monitoring procedures, and knowledge base content that scale beyond any one person.

• Participate in and help shape the on-call rotation supporting global live streaming operations and high-severity production incidents.

Additional Day to day:

• Quality Assurance workflows across a suite of back-end and front-end frameworks

• Other video QA and software engineers to build, test, and release these video platforms

• Automation testing across the whole end-to-end video lifecycle, including acquisition, processing, delivery and playback.

• Development and maintenance of internal automated QA systems, ensuring that QA testing is seamlessly integrated with continuous integration and deployment strategies

• Define and develop useful metrics and alerts for monitoring live streaming events and proactively identify reliability risks.

• Mentor and guide engineers, fostering a culture of collaboration and technical excellence.

• Working with internal services to increase automation of the QA workflow.

• Required Qualifications

• 8+ years supporting large-scale live streaming, OTT platforms, broadcast technology, or video delivery systems, with a track record of technical leadership.

• Proven experience serving as the senior technical escalation resource for live operations teams during Tier-1 live events, including leading critical incident response.

• Expert-level troubleshooting across end-to-end streaming architectures, including:

• Contribution and video transport

• Cloud encoding and transcoding

• Packaging and origin services

• DRM

• SSAI/DAI

• CDN distribution

• Player playback

• Deep expertise in HLS, DASH, CMAF/fMP4, MPEG-TS, SCTE-35, timed metadata, and adaptive bitrate streaming.

• Hands-on experience analyzing manifests, transport streams, encoder logs, player telemetry, QoS/QoE metrics, and cloud infrastructure metrics.

• Strong working knowledge of AWS Media Services, CDN technologies, cloud networking, and streaming observability platforms.

• Working knowledge of contribution protocols including SRT, Zixi, RIST, RTP, UDP, and multicast workflows.

• Strong command of DRM, SSAI, client playback behavior, redundancy architectures, and failover strategies, with the ability to design and improve them, not just operate them.

• Demonstrated ability to lead root cause analysis and drive systemic fixes across multiple teams and vendors.

• Excellent incident management and executive-level communication skills in high-pressure live production environments.

• Experience mentoring or technically leading other engineers or operators, formally or informally.

• Preferred Qualifications

• Experience defining operational standards, runbooks, or readiness frameworks for a live streaming organization.

• Experience evaluating and onboarding new vendors or streaming technologies.

• Background supporting live sports or other high-concurrency, high-visibility events.

• Paramount+, a direct-to-consumer digital subscription video on-demand and live streaming service from Paramount Global, combines live sports, breaking news, and a mountain of entertainment. The premium streaming service features an expansive library of original series, hit shows and popular movies across every genre from world-renowned brands and production studios, including BET, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures and the Smithsonian Channel. The service is also the streaming home to unmatched sports programming, including every CBS Sports event, from golf to football to basketball and more, plus exclusive streaming rights for major sports properties, including some of the world’s biggest and most popular soccer leagues. Paramount+ also enables subscribers to stream local CBS stations live across the U.S. in addition to the ability to stream Paramount Streaming’s other live channels: CBSN for 24/7 news, CBS Sports HQ for sports news and analysis, and ET Live for e