Backend Software Engineering Manager (Video & Ads Engineering)

Backend Software Engineering Manager (Video & Ads Engineering)

At Philo, we’re a group of technology and product people who set out to build the future of television, merging modern technology with one of the most compelling mediums ever invented — in short, we’re building the TV experience that we’ve always wanted for ourselves. Leveraging cloud delivery, modern tech stacks, machine learning, and handcrafted native app experiences across 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.

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. Both teams share infrastructure that transcodes content and ads and stitches the two together for seamless playback. Sharing the goal of a high‑quality video experience, the ad team is innovating in the programmatic ad space with home‑grown systems, allowing the two teams to 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 in‑house video pipeline ingests live and VOD content from partners, dynamically inserts ads into 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.

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. 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.

Projected Start Date

ASAP

Status

Full‑time

Location

San Francisco, CA; Brooklyn, NY; Cambridge, MA; or fully remote within the U.S.

Compensation

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

Benefits

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 thereafter)

$500 / month ($6,000 / year) bonus for employees who commit to working at least three 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!

Seniority level

Mid‑Senior level

Employment type

Full‑time

Job function

Engineering and Information Technology

Industries

Entertainment Providers

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