Manager, Playout Engineering

Company Description

We create world-class content, which we distribute across our portfolio of film, television, and streaming, and bring to life through our theme parks and consumer experiences. We own and operate leading entertainment and news brands, including NBC, NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC, NBC Sports, Telemundo, NBC Local Stations, Bravo, USA Network, and Peacock, our premium ad-supported streaming service. We produce and distribute premier filmed entertainment and programming through Universal Filmed Entertainment Group and Universal Studio Group, and have world-renowned theme parks and attractions through Universal Destinations & Experiences. NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation.

Here you can be your authentic self. As a company uniquely positioned to educate, entertain and empower through our platforms, Comcast NBCUniversal stands for including everyone. Our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives, coupled with our Corporate Social Responsibility work, is informed by our employees, audiences, park guests and the communities in which we live. We strive to foster a diverse, equitable and inclusive culture where our employees feel supported, embraced and heard. Together, we’ll continue to create and deliver content that reflects the current and ever-changing face of the world.

Job Description

NBCUniversal Operations & Technology is looking for a Manager, Playout Engineering to provide technical leadership to a team of DevOps and Site Reliability Engineers. This team is leading the technology and process transformation involved in migrating ‘master control’ playout from on-prem to a cloud native, scalable solution. In scope are all of NBC Universal live linear channels – NBC, Telemundo, USA, Peacock Virtual Channels, etc.

In this position, you will have the opportunity to create, deploy and support cutting edge technology that sets up live linear playout for the next generation of business use cases that are scalable, on-demand, tiered with respect to level of reliability, content supply chain optimized, and ready for the newest innovations in video/audio quality.

This role requires the ability to operate in a fast-paced environment. For new initiatives, you must be able to effectively lead the team to review/intake new project requests, resource estimate, and execute on projects to committed deliverables. For systems in production, you will lead a team that is on-call and must be able to lead L2 & L3 troubleshooting to maintain reliable distribution.

Responsibilities 

• Lead a team of ~10 DevOps and SRE engineers
• Responsible for Broadcast Automation Support of our Master Control Playout ecosystem
• Responsible for deploying Broadcast Automation software to the cloud using CI/CD tools
• Use development and staging environments to validate Broadcast Automation software functionality before deploying to production
• Create high level conceptual drawings for project planning
• Produce cloud usage cost estimates for project proposals
• Leadership in driving automation, remote deployments (across country)
• L2 & L3 support to maintain playout infrastructure/services for NBCUniversal including providing after hours on-call support select weeks
• Manage highly reliable, enterprise scale on-air systems
• Leadership in creating monitoring dashboards / automated alerting using Splunk & Grafana

Qualifications

Basic Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related degree / experience
• 5+ years of’ hands-on-keyboard Engineering experience working with broadcast automation playout environments e.g. Snell, Harris, Imagine, Amagi
• Cumulative 2+ years of experience in Engineering management and/or team lead experience
• Requires on-call 24/7 availability for escalations
• Hands-on-keyboard experience administrating Linux environments
• Hands-on-keyboard experience with automation platforms (e.g. Ansible, Terraform, CloudFormation)
• Experience with monitoring/logging tools e.g. Splunk and Grafana.
• Experience with automated deployement CI/CD tools (e.g. Argo CD, GitHub Actions)
• Experience with streaming protocols and codecs (e.g. TS, HEVC, H.264, HLS, CMAF, SCTE-35, SCTE-224, ESAM, SRT/RIST)
• Experience with IP networking and interfacing with cloud-based networks
• Experience with containerization (Docker & Kubernetes)
• Comfortable building and operating infrastructure within a large enterprise, interfacing with multiple technology teams
• Excellent communicator and able to clearly articulate complex issues and technologies
• Expert with broadcast playout systems (master control) technologies
• Expert with public cloud, specifically building environments using AWS services
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced agile environment. Requirements change quickly and our team needs to constantly adapt to meet objectives
• An automate-first and automate everything attitude
• Ability to use Agile process for project management, development & tracking

Desired Characteristics:

• Experience with cloud native playout vendor solutions (Amagi, Evertz, GrassValley, Harmonic, Imagine, CoralBay, Veset, etc.)
• Experience with DevSecOps principles
• Ability to create user interface designs based on client workflows

Additional Requirements:

• Hybrid: This position has been designated as hybrid, required to contribute to the Englewood Cliffs, NJ office a minimum of three days per week.

Additional Information

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.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. You can submit your request to AccessibilitySupport@nbcuni.com.

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