Director, Software Development (Roku)

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Who We Are…

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The WBD Global Client eXperience (GCX) organization is hiring a Director of Software Development for the Roku TV platform, specializing in end client software development and delivery. This is a great opportunity for a collaborative, empathetic and courageous leader that has a passion for client application technology and prefers to remain close to code, the architecture and operational excellence. You will be a key part of the team rolling out our client applications globally on a platform that can support many brands, features and content types. Our goal is to showcase our world class content across mobile, web and connected TV. With WBD’s reach, this team’s work will be used by millions of people around the world.

As the Director of Software Development (Roku), you will lead an organization of technology managers and engineers, working cross-functionally with product, design, editorial, content creators, quality assurance and program managers to deliver and support WBD’s multi-brand core digital video & audio platform. You’ll have a keen focus on Operational Excellence, regularly reviewing data from a range of sources, looking to improve the customer experience as well as responding to live issues and events. Being a local leader you will be confident supporting activities in the Ottawa office, social events, hackathons and other company activities beyond your direct team.

Skills Required: 

• 12+ years of professional experience in software development, of which 5+ years involves direct management of a team of 15 or more full time employees. 

• Professional experience operating in a continuous delivery organization that leverages Agile methodologies (ceremonies) and tools (Jira). Comfortable working on early iterations of solutions without clearly defined parameters, and the ability to lead a team which has autonomy in their day-to-day decisions.

• Experience developing client applications for Smart TV’s, connected devices (eg. Amazon Firestick) or mobile or some other resource restricted device.

• Experience working with client technologies with limited hardware resources.

• Demonstrate an advanced understanding of troubleshooting, root-cause analysis, application design, solution development, human factors/usability design, and implementation of projects for major business units or the enterprise.

• Experience profiling and optimizing front end applications.

• Operational excellence experience, monitoring and incident management.

• Extensive experience building and delivering client apps

• Ability to translate business requirements to technical architecture and designs.

• Comfortable communicating with stakeholders from internal technical and nontechnical members, product managers, C-level management.

• A general understanding of DevOps CI/CD tools (Github Actions) and implementation best practices.

• Education / Certification: Computer Science or equivalent experience.

Nice to haves: 

• Knowledge of the Roku development platform.

• General understanding of the challenges and architecture of video technology solutions, from front-end client player integration to full delivery cycle of video content: encoding, packaging, and distribution.

• Automated QA strategies and processes.

• Experience with backend technologies, REST, JSONAPI, AWS services.

• Unit & integration testing and it’s benefits and tradeoffs.

• Knowledge of some client application language e.g. BrightScript, Swift, Kotlin or Typescript.

• Experience building solutions for high traffic applications and/or sites.

• Understanding of streaming media in a multi-CDN environment.

• Understanding of engineering best practices for performance and accessibility

• Demonstrated hands-on experience in the development or integration of video player libraries

• Working knowledge of media streaming, client-side and server-side ad insertion, video player events, and captions.

• A|B testing.

As a member of the team, you will:

• Be responsible for defining a technical strategy that aligns or compliments the product strategy and roadmap.

• Be responsible for owning, implementing, developing and maintaining the overall Roku client experience along with thorough automated testing.

• Hire great talent that helps better support the team’s goals and levels up the other developers.

• Communicate effectively with engineering and product to ensure requirements and expectations are met.

• Collaborate with team members in the planning and execution of new features and products.

• Provide strategic technical guidance and proactively make decisions that help the team succeed.

• Collaborate with video streaming and encoding teams to improve video delivery and playback.

• Ensure the team has what it needs to do their work effectively, investing in their development and improvement.

About you: 

• You are excited to learn and ready to take on new challenges, while continually growing and learning.

• You are an excellent communicator, equally comfortable discussing complex technical concepts with a team or presenting to executive leadership.

• You can assess a technical task and break it into manageable tasks with other engineers and product managers.

• You are comfortable giving demos of your work and explaining technical details and requirements across teams.

• You prefer working in an environment that prioritizes strong bi-directional partnerships with Product and other key stakeholders.

• You love mentoring developers, believing growing skills for your team, even if that surpasses your own.

• You are excited to add positively to the culture of WBD based around trust, partnership and direct constructive feedback.

• You are passionate about improving the code you touch and interact with.

• You lead by example, building trust in every interaction.

How We Get Things Done…

This last bit is probably the most important! Here at WBD, our guiding principles are the core values by which we operate and are central to how we get things done. You can find them at   along with some insights from the team on what they mean and how they show up in their day to day. We hope they resonate with you and look forward to discussing them during your interview.

Championing Inclusion at WBD

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