Technical Director (Los Angeles, Ca)
Job Location:
Los Angeles, CA - USA
Monthly Salary:
Posted:
Application Deadline:
Vacancies:
Job Summary
The Athletic is seeking a razor-sharp unflappable Technical Director to spearhead the technical execution of our new flagship daily live show. Sitting in Seat 1 of the control room you will be the absolute backbone of the broadcast responsible for translating the Senior Producers editorial cues into flawless real-time on-screen action.
This is a highly technical fast-paced role that requires instantaneous decision-making. You will operate the video switcher manage multi-cam studio setups route remote guest feeds and oversee the health of the live stream from fade up to sign-off. The ideal candidate is a control room veteran who possesses a deep understanding of modern IP/digital streaming workflows and stays perfectly calm when breaking news forces an on-the-fly technical pivot.
- Live Switching & Execution: Physically operate the production switcher during the daily live broadcast executing clean cuts and video effects instantly on the Senior Producers call.
- Control Room Setup & Workflow: Configure and maintain the control room architecture. Build and save custom macros registers and snapshots to ensure the daily look of the show is consistent and easily retrievable.
- Signal & Feed Management: Manage all incoming and outgoing signals. Coordinate the seamless integration of remote guests via Zoom etc ensuring low-latency video and mix-minus audio are locked before going live.
- Technical Quality Control: Monitor video and audio levels throughout the broadcast to ensure compliance with premium streaming standards. Act as the primary gatekeeper against frame drops stream lag or audio syncing issues.
- Equipment Oversight & Maintenance: Oversee the studios physical technical infrastructure including robotic cameras (PTZ) lighting grids encoders and hardware/software updates.
- Crisis Troubleshooting: Diagnose and resolve technical failures (e.g. dropped remote feeds frozen graphics engines signal loss) mid-broadcast without interrupting the viewer experience.
- Post-Show Archive: Manage the master recording configuration ensuring clean and dirty cuts of the broadcast are properly encoded archived and handed off to the post-production and social teams.
- 5 Years of Live TD Experience: A proven track record of switching daily fast-paced live programming (sports news or high-volume talk formats).
- Hardware & Software Mastery: Deep technical fluency with industry-standard switchers and streaming platformsspecifically vMix NewTek TriCaster Ross Carbonite or Blackmagic ATEM systems.
- IP Video & Protocols: Expert knowledge of modern video transport workflows including NDI SRT RTMP and traditional SDI workflows.
- The Live Mindset: Exceptional reaction time and spatial awareness. You can listen to the producer in your ear watch 10 monitor screens at once and punch the next shot perfectly on beat.
- Problem Solver under Pressure: A proactive troubleshooter who always has a Plan B (and Plan C) mapped out in the routing switcher if a piece of gear fails mid-show.
- Team Collaborator: Ability to work seamlessly alongside the Audio Engineer Graphics Producer and Associate Producer to create a synchronized ego-free control room environment.
We are excited to learn more about you and your experience. To keep our hiring process as fair and authentic as possible we ask that you submit your own work and not use GenAI tools to generate substantive content during the application and interview process. If you are a candidate for a technical role we will let you know what specific tools you are permitted to use for your technical assessment.
Required Experience:
Director
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