5v Video

We're looking for a Senior Android Playback Engineer to help build and scale the video playback experience for a fast-growing streaming platform. This is a hands-on engineering role for someone who genuinely nerds out on media playback - buffering strategy, adaptive bitrate, DRM, and squeezing every bit of quality and reliability out of the Android viewing experience across phones, tablets, and Android TV/Google TV devices.

You’ll work at the intersection of app engineering and media systems, partnering closely with backend, CDN, QA, and product teams to ship a playback experience that just works - fast starts, minimal rebuffering, and rock-solid stability at scale.

What You’ll Do

• Own and evolve the Android video playback stack, built on ExoPlayer / Media3, across mobile and Android TV/Google TV.
• Design and tune adaptive bitrate (ABR) logic, buffering strategy, and startup-time optimization to reduce rebuffering and time-to-first-frame.
• Implement and maintain DRM workflows (Widevine) and secure playback paths for licensed content.
• Work with HLS and/or DASH streaming protocols, CDN behavior, and manifest handling to diagnose and resolve real-world playback issues.
• Build robust error handling, retry logic, and telemetry so playback failures are caught, understood, and fixed fast.
• Partner with data/analytics teams to define and track playback QoE metrics (startup time, rebuffer ratio, bitrate switches, error rates).
• Collaborate with backend, DevOps, QA, and product teams across the full playback pipeline - not just the client.
• Profile and optimize for performance, battery usage, memory footprint, and device fragmentation across the Android ecosystem.
• Mentor other engineers on playback and media architecture, and help raise the bar on code quality and testing.
• Stay current on evolving codecs, DRM standards, and streaming protocols, and bring recommendations back to the team.

What You Bring

• 5-8+ years of professional Android development experience, with a meaningful chunk of that focused on media/video playback.
• Strong hands-on experience with ExoPlayer or Media3 in production apps.
• Solid understanding of adaptive streaming protocols (HLS, DASH) and how CDNs, manifests, and segment delivery affect playback.
• Experience implementing DRM (Widevine required; PlayReady/FairPlay exposure a plus) in a commercial streaming app.
• Strong Kotlin and/or Java skills, with a solid grasp of Android app architecture (MVVM, Coroutines, DI frameworks like Hilt/Dagger).
• Experience developing for Android TV / Google TV or other living-room/CTV platforms is a strong plus.
• Comfort with performance profiling and debugging tools (Android Studio Profiler, systrace/Perfetto, network inspection).
• A track record of shipping and supporting apps at real scale - not just demos or side projects.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work cross-functionally with backend, QA, and product partners.