Senior Playout Systems Engineer, LSO Playout

Position summary

LSO Media Group is seeking a Senior Playout Systems Engineer to develop the core engine for LSO Playout, a forthcoming product for scheduled television and streaming channels. This full-time position reports to the Director of Product & Engineering, LSO Playout. You will turn programming schedules into predictable playback, designing how channels start, transition between assets, recover from interruptions and report what actually aired. Planned cloud-only and local-and-cloud options require careful decisions about synchronization, local operation and service dependencies.

You will work closely with desktop, streaming, AI and platform engineers to define a clear boundary between planning a schedule and executing it. The on-air engine must follow validated rules and explicit operator decisions, including when an AI-assisted workflow proposes a change. AI coding and analysis tools will be part of the development process, but you must understand, review, debug and test the resulting code. The role suits an engineer who can make timing and failure behavior observable, explain tradeoffs to broadcast operators and build software that remains understandable under pressure.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement a deterministic scheduler and playback state machine with explicit behavior for fixed starts, asset transitions, overruns, underruns and manual interventions.
• Define channel time, clock synchronization and drift handling, documenting the timing guarantees that can be supported in each deployment model.
• Build validation for schedule conflicts, unavailable media, incompatible asset properties and insufficient preparation time before events become eligible to air.
• Implement durable schedule versions, playback checkpoints and as-run records so operators can reconcile planned and actual output.
• Design and test interruption recovery, fallback content and failover behavior with clear authority over which instance may control a channel.
• Work with desktop and streaming engineers to define engine interfaces for media readiness, transport state, output availability and channel control.
• Develop local scheduling and synchronization behavior for the planned local-and-cloud option, including explicit handling of connectivity loss and conflicting updates.
• Create simulation and integration tests that exercise boundary conditions, long-running playback, clock changes and repeatable fault scenarios.
• Use AI development tools to accelerate implementation and investigation while verifying generated changes through code review, targeted tests and operational evidence.
• Document architecture, diagnostics and recovery procedures, and participate in agreed operational support arrangements as the product matures.

Required qualifications

• At least five years of software engineering experience, including ownership of systems with significant timing, concurrency or reliability requirements.
• Strong programming and debugging skills in a language suited to systems or service development, with the ability to investigate race conditions, state transitions and resource use.
• Experience designing persistent state, idempotent operations, recovery behavior and automated tests for production software.
• Practical understanding of digital media playback and the differences between a programming schedule, media preparation and output execution.
• Demonstrated use of AI coding or analysis tools, with the ability to explain, independently validate and maintain the code they help produce.
• A degree in computer science, engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience, together with clear technical documentation and collaboration skills.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with broadcast automation, channel origination, live production or other systems that must preserve continuous output.
• Experience with media frameworks, such as FFmpeg or GStreamer, and with automated playback or signal verification.
• Experience designing active-and-standby services, offline operation or distributed coordination with explicit ownership and recovery rules.

Measures of success

• A documented timing model and reference implementation produce repeatable results against agreed playback acceptance criteria.
• Schedule changes, operator actions and actual playback can be traced through useful records and diagnostics.
• Failure tests demonstrate defined recovery and fallback behavior without competing channel controllers.
• Engine interfaces let desktop and streaming teams integrate output paths without duplicating scheduling authority.

First 90 days

During your first 90 days, you will review operator workflows and product assumptions with the director, define a timing and channel-state model, and build a small playable schedule prototype. You will agree on acceptance criteria, establish a repeatable simulation harness and demonstrate recovery from selected media and process failures. Your findings will inform the architecture, staffing dependencies and development sequence; the milestone is evidence for reliable implementation, rather than a promised public launch date.

Compensation

Proposed annual base salary of $145,000–$190,000 USD. The final offer will reflect relevant experience, qualifications and the agreed scope of the position, subject to approval. This range covers base pay only; any incentive compensation or benefits would be specified separately in an employment offer.

What to include in your application

If available, include a nonconfidential project or code sample that shows your systems engineering decisions, how you used AI tools and how you validated the result. Explain your contribution, tests and known limitations. Do not submit proprietary code or customer information.