Location: Cupertino CA
Duration: 6 Weeks
Schedule: Weeks 1-4: 10-hour days, business hours | Weeks 5-G: Extended days up to 14 hours, including evenings and weekend work
About This Engagement
Client's Worldwide Events and Experiences team is seeking an elite-level Encoding Engineer to support a high-profile global live broadcast. This is a zero-tolerance-for-failure environment delivering to multi-million concurrent viewers worldwide. We need someone who has been in this seat before - not someone learning on the job.
This is a highly focused, operationally intensive, G-week engagement. The right candidate arrives ready to execute from day one, thrives in high-stakes broadcast environments, and holds themselves to the same bar we hold this event: extraordinary.
What You'll Do
Pre-Event (Weeks 1-5)
- Review existing transmission workflows and failsafe plans; identify risks and recommend updates
- Validate all redundancy, failover, and backup procedures
- Review, update, and test existing encoding configuration files and their execution
- Prepare a detailed run-of-show checklist
- Participate in all pre-show tests and platform validations
- Assist with content QC to confirm proper asset delivery through all transmission pipelines
During the Event (Week 5/6)
- Operate HLS encoders for looping test cycles, platform tests, rehearsals, and the live show
- Continuously monitor the full signal path from Encoder to CDN boundary
- Verify quality and health of encoding, delivery, and encoders in real time
- Validate player output and behavior across multiple platforms
- Serve as Point of Contact for the CDN team
- Execute failover procedures as needed; provide real-time technical guidance
- Manage state changes to the .com player
- Perform test encodes and segment preparation for VOD
- Maintain live incident logs throughout the broadcast
- Assist with HLS VOD upload to CDN
Post-Event (Week 6)
- Deliver a technical debrief and report documenting lessons learned
- Restore all media and resources to archival locations
- Complete all required documentation to GitHub and NAS
- Perform any post-event asset corrections, including re-encodes or content replacement
Required Qualifications
Given the stakes of this event, every requirement below is a genuine minimum bar.
- 10+ years of hands-on experience in online broadcast / live streaming operations at organizations that regularly deliver to >5 million concurrent viewers internationally
- Deep, expert-level command of HLS, including advanced manifest manipulation, multi-variant playlist generation, and adaptive bitrate (ABR) optimization
- Proven, recent operational experience with both on-premises and cloud-based encoding systems. On-prem AWS Elemental experience is critical
- Understanding of CDN behavior as it relates to encoding and packaging output, including packaging, downstream caching, origin configuration and ingest design.
- Demonstrated experience deploying and operating real-time stream health monitoring systems - dashboards, telemetry, alerting across HLS manifest health, segment availability, bitrate laddering, and viewer QoE metrics
- Verifiable track record of designing and executing encoder failover and redundancy validation procedures at scale
- Experience authoring run-of-show documentation, incident logs, and post-event technical reports
- Fluency executing in high-pressure, zero-fail live broadcast environments - candidates must be able to cite specific comparable engagements
Preferred Qualifications
- Knowledge of accessibility and subtitle formats: WebVTT, TTML, CEA-C08/708
- Familiarity with audio broadcast standards including Dolby Atmos and multi-channel formats
- Comfort coordinating with international partners across varying technical levels
The Right Person
This role is not suitable for someone building toward this level of work. The right candidate:
- Has done this exact job - operated HLS encoders for global live events at the scale described above
- Can demonstrate a clear track record of specific events, viewer scale, and incident management
- Is comfortable with operational intensity - extended days, fast decisions, and live event pressure
- Can hit the ground running in Week 1 with minimal onboarding time