Senior Software Engineer

Role Description

You'll be a senior engineer on our Encoding team, shipping production code in the core encoding product (Java/Kotlin, C++) that runs at massive cloud scale (VOD and live, AV1/HEVC).

Our engineering team is in Europe. You'll be our senior engineer on the ground in the US: contributing in the team's sprints, and owning the technical relationship with our largest US media and streaming customers during hours when Europe is offline. It's a real engineering role with direct customer ownership, and it's the first of its kind at Bitmovin, so you'll shape how it works.

This is the first Forward Deployed Engineer at Bitmovin — a greenfield role where you'll define the playbook, not inherit one.

You'll sit inside our Encoding engineering team, shipping production code in its sprints, while being the technical face of Bitmovin for our marquee US media and streaming customers. When Europe is offline, you're the one keeping US enterprise accounts moving: triaging encoding issues, driving incidents to resolution or a clean handover, and turning what you learn in the field into better product.

What you’ll do:

• Contribute production code to the encoding stack (Java/Kotlin, C++) as a full member of the Encoding team's sprints
• Own our US enterprise accounts technically during EU off-hours: triage and troubleshoot encoding issues, drive incidents to resolution or a clean handover
• Debug live, distributed systems under real customer pressure: log analysis, error diagnosis, network traces, reproducing issues from limited information
• Travel to customer sites to support integrations, run technical workshops, and handle escalations
• Feed what you learn in the field back into sprint planning and the product roadmap

What success looks like (6–12 months):

• You're shipping production code in the Encoding team's sprints, not just triaging issues
• You've become the trusted US technical contact for our largest media and streaming accounts, and off-hours response times have visibly improved
• You've defined a repeatable playbook for triage, resolve-vs-escalate, and clean handovers to the EU team
• You've run at least one on-site customer integration or workshop end to end
• Field learnings from your accounts have shaped sprint planning or the roadmap at least once
• The EU team trusts you to own US hours solo. Your async updates are clear enough that Europe picks up where you left off without friction.
• You've built a clear picture of how customers actually use our product day to day, and turned it into documentation the product and engineering teams actually rely on.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience at a senior level, strong in Java or C++, able to contribute production code in the encoding team's sprints
• 2+ years in a customer-facing technical role (solutions architecture, professional services, forward deployed, or named-account support)
• Cloud experience (AWS and/or GCP), Docker, and hands-on experience running and debugging scalable distributed services
• Strong troubleshooting on live customer systems: log analysis, error diagnosis, network traces, reproducing issues from limited information
• Open to AI-assisted development workflows and comfortable using AI tools like Claude Code
• Excellent written and verbal English, with a track record of communicating credibly with enterprise engineering teams
• High autonomy: comfortable owning issues end-to-end during US hours while the EU team is offline, with sound judgment on when to escalate vs. resolve
• Based on the US East Coast or in Denver, and willing to travel to customer sites regularly
• You must already have the right to work in the United States.

Requirements

• Video streaming domain knowledge: codecs (H.264/HEVC, ideally AV1), container formats, HLS/DASH, OTT encoding workflows
• Prior forward-deployed, solutions architect, or professional services experience at a SaaS or media-tech vendor
• Experience with Bitmovin or competing encoding platforms (AWS MediaConvert/Elemental, Harmonic, MediaKind)
• Live streaming and 24/7 operations experience: incident management, on-call

Benefits

• View the benefits on our Careers Page
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• Check the employee reviews on Glassdoor