Software Engineer – Broadcast Media Platforms

Eccalon, LLC; Hanover (MD); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Eccalon, LLC in Hanover, MD seeks a Broadcast Media Systems Software Engineer focused on real-time streaming and analytics platforms. You will design, build, and operate high-throughput pipelines, integrate FFmpeg, GStreamer, and TSDuck, and optimize for low latency and efficient resource usage.

Join a team collaborating with data, platform, and product groups to deliver mission-critical streaming, MAMs, playout, and graphics systems, with robust on-call support and documentation best practices.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Low-level C/C++/Rust programming and real-time systems.
• Comfort with manual memory management and multi-threading.
• Experience in Go or Python for stream orchestration and tooling.
• Foundational UDP/TCP/IP networking knowledge and socket programming.
• Experience with MPEG-TS, media containers, and streaming workflows.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable data streaming pipelines.
• Develop and operate transport and broadcast media architectures.
• Implement low-level wrappers for codecs and hardware interfaces.
• Tune systems for throughput, latency, and resource efficiency.
• Add monitoring, logging, and metrics for streaming apps.
• Collaborate with data, product, and infra teams on streaming use cases.

Skills

C/C++

Rust

Go

Python

Real-time systems

Networking

Media streaming

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/CE or related field

Tools

FFmpeg

GStreamer

TSDuck

libsrt

librist

Job description

Job Description

We are seeking a Broadcast Media Systems Software Engineer with a strong focus on data streaming and real-time processing platforms to help design, build, and operate scalable, high-throughput, low-latency systems. This role will work on distributed systems that ingest, process, and deliver streaming data used for analytics, machine learning, monitoring, and mission-critical applications. You will collaborate closely with data engineers, platform engineers, product teams, and infrastructure to ensure reliability, performance, and scalability across streaming pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain scalable data streaming pipelines
• Develop and operate transport and broadcast media related architectures
• Implement custom transport logic and socket architectures to handle high-throughput packet and frame-level media streams
• Optimize systems for throughput, latency, and resource efficiency
• Participate in capacity planning and performance tuning
• Implement monitoring, logging, alerting, and metrics for streaming applications
• Integrate and customize open-source media frameworks including FFmpeg, GStreamer, and TSDuck into proprietary streaming ecosystems.
• Implement low-level wrappers and APIs using C, C++, or Rust to interface directly with core networking and hardware-accelerated video codecs.
• Ensure strict stream compliance, packet ordering, fault tolerance, and frame-accurate timing across all linear playout systems.
• Optimize media software for CPU cache locality, minimal memory allocation, zero-copy data paths, and overall resource efficiency.
• Implement robust monitoring, logging, and metrics specifically tailored for packet-level streaming health, jitter, and transport stream analytics.
• Debug production issues related to packet loss, latency spikes, frame corruption, backpressure, or clock drift.
• Support on-call rotations and incident response for critical data systems
• Collaborate with broadcast engineering teams to build, integrate, and test streaming, MAMs, playout, automations, and graphics systems.
• Collaborate with product, analytics, and ML teams to support new use cases
• Write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code
• Participate in design reviews, code reviews, and technical discussions
• Contribute to documentation and engineering best practices

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).
• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Systems Programming: 2+ years of hands‑on experience programming real‑time applications at the Low-Level / Packet Level using C, C++, or Rust.
• Must be highly comfortable with manual memory management, pointer manipulation, and multi-threaded optimizations.
• Strong experience in a modern concurrency language like Go or Python for stream orchestration, tooling, and control-plane API development.
• Network Protocols: Deep, foundational understanding of UDP and TCP/IP networking mechanics. Direct experience managing socket programming, custom congestion control, packet pacing, and error correction techniques (ARQ / selective retransmission).
• Media Transport: Proven experience with broadcast and linear video workflows, including media containers and multiplexing (specifically MPEG-TS wrappers).
• Experience building custom stream troubleshooting, diagnostic, or real-time monitoring software.
• Codecs: Codec-agnostic architecture mindset with low-level implementation knowledge of H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, and emerging standards like AV1.
• Automation & Scripting: Strong scripting capabilities in Python or Bash for stream orchestration, pipeline automation, and local-first systems management.

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct development experience with libsrt, librist, RTMP, or similar APIs.
• Deep familiarity with open‑source media frameworks like FFmpeg, Astreamer, GStreamer, TSDuck and low level packet streaming tools.
• Experience using network analysis tools to debug packet loss, jitter, clock drift, and MTU issues on live networks.
• Familiarity with broader broadcast media components, including automation protocols, digital playout systems, on-air graphics engines, and Media Asset Management (MAM) platforms.
• Familiarity with AWS, GCP, or Azure specifically regarding networking components (firewall traversal, listener/caller architecture, and high‑bandwidth ingress).
• Lightweight containerization experience or portable streaming endpoints or edge‑compute tools.
• Knowledge of serialization formats (like Protobuf or JSON) strictly for control‑plane APIs and performance telemetry aggregation.

About the Organization

Eccalon provides global solutions to the most challenging technological issues of the 21st-century, and our evolving portfolio spans five major markets: Machine Learning, Cybersecurity, Aerospace & Defense, Material Sciences, Advance Manufacturing, Sports Science, Biotechnology, and Health & Life Sciences.

Why Join Us?

Eccalon's Executives foster a supportive work environment allowing our teams to thrive, and have a fierce dedication to innovation, security, and people. Our culture is built on inclusion, teamwork, trust, and we are committed to offering career advancement opportunities to all employees. Encouraging a healthy and balanced life, we offer an extensive benefits package to support the wellness of our employees and their families. You will be joining a team of innovators, working with cutting edge technologies, supporting mission critical projects, and making an impact.

EOE Statement

Eccalon provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training.

EEO is the law.