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Who We Are
When we say the stuff dreams are made of were not just referring to the world of wizards dragons and superheroes or even to the wonders of Planet Earth. Behind WBDs vast portfolio of iconic content and beloved brands are the storytellers bringing our characters to life the creators bringing them to your living rooms and the dreamers creating whats next
From brilliant creatives to technology trailblazers across the globe WBD offers career defining opportunities thoughtfully curated benefits and the tools to explore and grow into your best selves. Here you are supported here you are celebrated here you can thrive.
We are the now and the next. The power behind the people building the future. We are born from the spirit of innovation. We are created from the idea that people around the world want more need more deserve more. We are the home of the global digital revolution. We are CNN.
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The CNN Digital team is hiring a Director of Software Development specializing in consumer video and audio product experiences. This is a great opportunity for a collaborative empathetic and courageous leader that has a passion for video and audio technology and prefers to remain close to code and architecture. The person in this role will help lead the development of the digital video and audio products organization with ambitious goals of engaging CNNs vast audience with user centric experiences that showcase our world class content across mobile web and connected TV. With CNNs reach this teams work will be used by hundreds of millions of people around the world.
As the Director of Video and Audio Experiences you will lead a team of technology managers architects and engineers working crossfunctionally with product design editorial content creators and program managers to deliver and support CNNs core digital video & audio products and capabilities. Features and products this team has released recently are:
- CNN Shorts Embracing vertical video and bringing it to where our viewers are.
- CNN Headlines This new streaming product brings breaking news to our audience around the world
- Watch Next a key recommendation feature in the mobile app video experience that drives additional engagement.
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 daytoday decisions.
- Experience developing fully responsive consumerfacing web applications working together with enduser testers UX designers and product managers. Extensive knowledge of CSS HTML NodeJS TypeScript/JavaScript/React and web frameworks is preferred.
- General understanding of the challenges and architecture of video technology solutions from frontend client player integration to full delivery cycle of video content: encoding packaging and distribution.
- Demonstrated handson experience in the development or integration of video player libraries is preferred.
- Experience working with video and/or audio content in mobile or OTT apps is ideal but not required.
- Experience integrating services and SDKs (thirdparty or otherwise) for ads analytics audience engagement QOS/E and media asset management.
- Experience building comprehensive and robust APIs configurations and components to support video playback user interfaces video metadata and thirdparty integrations.
- Working knowledge of media streaming clientside and serverside ad insertion video player events and captions.
- Working knowledge of digital rights management (DRM) analytics technologies and adaptive bitrate algorithms. Understanding of how video playback works in modern web browsers and any associated limitations media source extensions encrypted media extensions and auto play.
- Ability to translate business requirements to technical architecture and designs.
- Comfortable communicating with stakeholders from internal technical and nontechnical members product managers Clevel management.
- Demonstrated expert knowledge of software development methodologies practice and architecture specifically experience architecting performant scalable secure and cost optimized cloud solutions on AWS.
- A general understanding of DevOps CI/CD tools (Jenkins Maven/Gradle and Terraform) and implementation best practices.
- Demonstrate an advanced understanding of troubleshooting rootcause analysis application design solution development human factors/usability design and implementation of projects for major business units or the enterprise.
- Education / Certification: Computer Science or equivalent experience.
Nice to haves:
- Understanding of the Video player landscape and various thirdparty SDKs that integrate with them
- AB testing and consumer testing platforms.
- Experience with AWS services (such as Lambda API Gateway SNS Elasticache S3 and CloudFront)
- Unit testing with frameworks such as Jasmine Mocha or Jest.
- Basic knowledge of Swift Kotlin or BrightScript.
- Experience building solutions for high traffic applications and/or sites.
- Understanding of streaming media in a multiCDN environment.
- Understanding of engineering best practices for performance and accessibility
- Extensive experience building and delivering apps in the in the Media industry
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 Audio & Video product experience along with thorough testing.
- Hire great talent that helps better support the teams goals and levels up the other engineers.
- Communicate effectively with engineering and product to ensure requirements and expectations are met.
- Collaborate with team members in the planning and 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 bidirectional partnerships with Product and other key stakeholders.
- You love mentoring engineers believing growing skills for your team even if that surpasses your own.
- You are excited to add positively to the culture of CNN 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
Warner Bros. Discovery embraces the opportunity to build a workforce that reflects a wide array of perspectives backgrounds and experiences. Being an equal opportunity employer means that we take seriously our responsibility to consider qualified candidates on the basis of merit without regard to race color religion national origin gender sexual orientation gender identity or expression age mental or physical disability and genetic information marital status citizenship status military status protected veteran status or any other category protected by law.
If youre a qualified candidate with a disability and you require adjustments or accommodations during the job application and/or recruitment process please visit our accessibility page for instructions to submit your request.
Required Experience:
Director