Senior iOS Video Player Engineer

About the Role

Kake is a remote-first, people-centric global network of senior engineers supporting innovative products across Fortune 500 and fast-growing companies. Our community spans over 45,000 engineers in more than 55 countries, fostering a culture where talented professionals develop, advance, and enjoy their work environment.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and maintain live video playback features for iOS and tvOS platforms.
• Enhance HLS playback using AVPlayer, emphasizing startup performance, buffering, latency, and stable playback.
• Diagnose and resolve intricate playback challenges in live streaming, including error handling, stalls, and maintaining live edge synchronization.
• Optimize playback performance at scale to guarantee dependable and high-quality viewing experiences.
• Leverage video analytics and Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics to detect issues and improve actual playback quality.
• Collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams to ensure consistent playback performance across devices.
• Contribute to developing best practices and continuous enhancements for streaming projects.

Requirements

• Minimum six years of iOS development experience with strong proficiency in Swift and Objective-C.
• Proven track record in building and maintaining video player and live playback components for iOS/tvOS.
• In-depth practical experience with HLS streaming and AVPlayer tuning, troubleshooting live streaming playback.
• Ability to debug and optimize playback performance, focusing on reducing rebuffering, improving startup times, and ensuring playback stability.
• Understanding of video streaming protocols, live playback concepts such as latency, live edge drift, adaptive bitrate (ABR) logic, and digital rights management (DRM) integration.
• Experience with video analytics tools or QoE metrics (e.g., Mux, Conviva) for diagnosing and enhancing playback quality in production environments.
• Excellent verbal and written English communication skills.
• Capability to work autonomously within a fast-paced remote setting.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in large-scale live sports streaming environments.
• Familiarity with advertising technologies specific to live streaming.
• Flexibility to work varying hours to accommodate overlap with distributed teams, particularly for 6-7 hours daily in US Pacific Time Zone.

Additional Information

• Required US timezone overlap of 6-7 hours daily PST.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation paid in US dollars, enabling global work and pay.
• Fully remote work environment that emphasizes trust and autonomy.
• Personal growth support through the "Better Me Fund" investing in your development and passions.
• A supportive community focused on social impact and mutual compassion.