Engineering Manager, VOD Media

The Media Group at NBCU supports a powerhouse collection of consumer-first brands including Peacock, NBC, Bravo, NBC Sports, and NBCU International. With unequalled scale, our teams make the most out of every opportunity to collaborate and learn from one another. We’re always looking for ways to innovate faster, accelerate our growth and consistently offer the very best in consumer experience. But most of all, we’re backed by a culture of respect. We embrace authenticity and inspire people to thrive.

We are seeking a Software Engineering Manager to lead the multidisciplinary team responsible for NBCUniversal’s cloud-native VOD encoding platform and associated media engineering capabilities. This leader will own engineering execution, technical direction, production reliability, and team development across software and media engineering. The role will bring together platform development, codec and quality innovation, and operational excellence to deliver secure, scalable, cost-efficient media-processing capabilities for Peacock and other NBCUniversal streaming services.

What the VOD team does

• Builds and operates the end-to-end media processing platform powering Peacock and other NBCUniversal streaming services.
• Develops cloud-native systems for ingest, encoding, packaging, quality validation, and delivery.
• Advances video, audio, subtitle, caption, and packaging technologies.
• Researches emerging codecs, HDR formats, AI-assisted workflows, and media innovations.
• Partners with Product, Operations, Playback, and Media Supply Chain teams.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead and grow a multidisciplinary team of software and media engineers.
• Own execution of the media processing platform roadmap, translating strategic priorities into clearly scoped initiatives, measurable outcomes, and predictable delivery across software and media engineering workstreams.
• Provide technical direction and architecture oversight for scalable, resilient, cloud-native media-processing services, while empowering senior engineers to lead design and implementation.
• Define and evolve engineering standards for architecture, API design, code quality, automated testing, CI/CD, release management, observability, documentation, and production readiness.
• Establish and maintain service-level objectives, operational metrics, alerting, incident-response practices, capacity planning, and continuous-improvement mechanisms for production media services.
• Drive adoption of new codecs, HDR formats, packaging standards, and AI-assisted media processing.
• Mentor engineers through coaching, career development, hiring, and performance management.
• Foster experimentation through proof-of-concepts, benchmarking, and data-driven engineering decisions.

• 3+ years of experience managing or formally leading software engineering teams, including hiring, coaching, performance management, and delivery accountability.
• Demonstrated ability to evaluate software architecture, APIs, distributed-system designs, operational data, and technical trade-offs; recent hands-on development experience with languages such as Go, Python, or Java is preferred.
• Experience leading iterative software delivery, dependency management, roadmap planning, and prioritization across multiple technical workstreams.
• Experience with AWS or similar cloud platforms.
• Strong understanding of video compression, adaptive bitrate streaming, HLS, DASH, CMAF, and DRM.
• Experience with FFmpeg or equivalent media frameworks.
• Understanding of video quality analysis (VMAF, SSIM, PSNR and subjective evaluation).
• Knowledge of video codecs (H.264, HEVC, AV1, VVC), HDR formats (HDR10, Dolby Vision, HLG), audio codecs (AAC, HE-AAC, Dolby Digital Plus), and subtitle/caption technologies (WebVTT, TTML, IMSC1, CEA-608/708).
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and technical leadership skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Kubernetes and container orchestration.
• GPU-accelerated media processing.
• AI/ML or computer vision for media workflows.
• Encoding optimization and bitrate reduction.
• Cloud migration and platform modernization.
• Open-source or media standards contributions.

Leadership Expectations

• Build an inclusive, high-performing engineering culture.
• Recruit, mentor, and retain top engineering talent.
• Drive engineering excellence through metrics and continuous improvement.
• Promote collaboration across engineering, product, and operations.
• Encourage innovation while maintaining operational excellence.

Hybrid: This position currently has a hybrid schedule, which requires contributing from the office a minimum of four days per week. The Company reserves the right to change in-office requirements at any time.

This position is eligible for company sponsored benefits, including medical, dental and vision insurance, 401(k), paid leave, tuition reimbursement, and a variety of other discounts and perks. Learn more about the benefits offered by NBCUniversal by visiting the Benefits page of the Careers website. Salary range: $125,000 - $160,000. (bonus and long-term incentive eligible)

As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with an NBCUniversal employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. NBCUniversal's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.