Software Engineer, Roku

NBCUniversal•Universal City, CA

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

NBCUniversal is seeking a Roku Software Engineer to own and evolve its Roku channel, from the SceneGraph UI through the playback pipeline and supporting APIs. The role focuses on building a fast, reliable streaming experience across a wide range of Roku devices, including older hardware with limited memory and processing capacity. The engineer will build Roku features in BrightScript and SceneGraph, improve video playback quality, tune performance, use QoE telemetry to identify and reduce playback issues, and collaborate with backend teams on the APIs that power the channel. The position also maintains Roku platform integrations, internal JavaScript/TypeScript tooling, and the channel’s CI/CD pipeline, and shepherds releases through Roku certification and into production. This is a hybrid position requiring work from the office at least four days per week. The company may change its in-office requirements. The role is eligible for company-sponsored benefits.

Requirements

At least 3 years of software engineering experience, including shipping production Roku channels using BrightScript and SceneGraph.
Demonstrated experience tuning performance on constrained devices, with specific examples of measured improvements such as reducing memory usage or startup latency, or eliminating frame drops.
Strong software engineering practices, including separation of concerns, testability, meaningful abstractions, code review, and ongoing refactoring.
Hands-on experience with video playback and streaming formats, including HLS and/or DASH, adaptive bitrate behavior, manifest structure, buffering strategy, and Widevine and PlayReady DRM on Roku.
Practical experience consuming and integrating RESTful APIs in a microservice architecture, including pagination, caching, retry and backoff strategies, error contracts, and versioning.
Working proficiency in JavaScript and TypeScript (Node.js) for internal tooling and build automation.
Hands-on experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines such as GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or CircleCI, including automated testing, build artifacts, and deployment across environments.
Comfort using debugging tools and telemetry, including debug consoles, profilers, and dashboards.
Clear written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain tradeoffs to non-client engineers.

Nice To Haves

Experience with the Node-based Roku toolchain, including BrighterScript, Rooibos or another BrightScript test framework, roku-deploy, and ropm.
Experience with reusable workflow patterns, composite actions, or shared pipeline libraries across multiple repositories.
Familiarity with SSAI/CSAI, VAST/VMAP, and ad-supported playback flows.
Experience with another living-room platform, such as tvOS, Android TV / Fire TV, Vizio, Tizen, or webOS, and understanding of how Roku differs.
Experience with CDNs, edge caching, and manifest manipulation.
Familiarity with QoE analytics platforms such as Conviva, Mux, or Datadog RUM.
Experience defining REST or GraphQL backend contracts with server teams.
Accessibility experience with captions, audio description, and voice navigation on TV platforms.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and ship Roku channel features in BrightScript and SceneGraph using maintainable, well-factored component architecture.
Own video playback quality, including startup time, adaptive bitrate behavior, seeking, trick play, DRM handshakes, and failure recovery.
Profile and optimize channel performance for device constraints, including memory, render-thread contention, task-node usage, image and texture budgets, and cold-start latency.
Use QoE telemetry, including startup time, rebuffer ratio, exit-before-video-start, and bitrate distribution, to improve performance over time.
Partner with backend teams to define and refine microservice and BFF APIs for catalog, playback authorization, entitlement, continue-watching, recommendations, and search.
Implement and maintain Roku platform integrations, including deep linking, Roku Search and content feeds, Continue Watching, Roku Pay / Instant Signup, and the Roku Advertising Framework.
Build and maintain JavaScript/TypeScript tooling and automation for builds, packaging, feed and manifest validation, releases, device-farm testing, and smoke tests.
Own the channel’s CI/CD pipeline, including automated builds and tests, static analysis, artifact packaging, device sideloading, and promotion through environments.
Manage releases through Roku channel certification, including performance and memory requirements, and handle beta-to-production promotion.
Establish engineering standards for code review, automated testing, static analysis, and documentation.
Debug production issues using Roku debug tools, profiling, ECP, and network capture, and turn root causes into durable fixes.