Real-Time Media Backend Engineer – Low-Latency Calls

LiveKit; United States; Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary and equity package

Health, dental, and vision benefits

Flexible vacation policy

Job summary

LiveKit is seeking a Backend Engineer to own the SFU and real-time media distribution mesh, driving reliability and performance at scale. You will work on end-to-end systems from design through production, shaping protocol adoption and cross-cutting reliability work.

You should be a strong systems programmer with experience in Go, Rust, C/C++, Java, or C#, and be ready to explain complex concepts to colleagues while shipping fast in a small, ownership-driven team.

Qualifications

• Built real-time media systems used by customers.
• In-depth knowledge of WebRTC: ICE, DTLS-SRTP, RTP/RTCP, congestion control, SDP.
• Experience in distributed systems and multi-threaded design.

Responsibilities

• Own and operate the LiveKit SFU and real-time media distribution mesh, including reliability and on-call.
• Build new real-time systems to support customer-facing features from design to production.
• Reduce latency and improve call quality across all sessions.
• Assess and adopt modern media protocols, including MoQ/WARP.
• Collaborate with SDK, infra, and product teams on cloud mesh architecture and reliability.

Skills

Go

Rust

C/C++

Java

C#

Tools

Pion

Job description

LiveKit is seeking a Backend Engineer to own the SFU and real-time media distribution mesh, driving reliability and performance at scale. You will work on end-to-end systems from design through production, shaping protocol adoption and cross-cutting reliability work.

You should be a strong systems programmer with experience in Go, Rust, C/C++, Java, or C#, and be ready to explain complex concepts to colleagues while shipping fast in a small, ownership-driven team.