Principal Engineer, CDN & Streaming

Company Description

VERSANT (Nasdaq: VSNT) is an industry-changing media and entertainment business and home to trusted brands that shape culture, inform audiences, and build lasting connections. It operates across four core markets: political news and opinion, business news and personal finance, golf, and sports and genre entertainment. These markets are served through a powerful portfolio of iconic and innovative brands, including CNBC, MS NOW, USA Network, Golf Channel, Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and Versant’s sports division USA Sports, along with complementary digital assets including Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and GolfPass.

Job Description

The Principal Engineer, CDN & Streaming is responsible for the architecture, performance, reliability, and evolution of VERSANT’s global media delivery platform. This role serves as the senior technical authority for content delivery networks, video streaming technologies, edge services, traffic management, DNS, and large-scale media distribution systems. 

Working across product, engineering, operations, network, cloud, and media technology teams, this individual will define the technical strategy for delivering live, linear, on-demand, and digital media experiences to millions of consumers across web, mobile, connected TV, and emerging platforms. 

The ideal candidate possesses deep expertise in streaming architectures, CDN design, multi-CDN orchestration, video delivery protocols, edge computing, internet performance, observability, and media operations. This individual will drive innovation while ensuring the highest levels of scalability, resiliency, performance, viewer experience, and cost efficiency across VERSANT's media ecosystem. 

Responsibilities 

CDN Architecture, Traffic Management & Strategy 

• Define and own the technical roadmap for VERSANT’s global CDN, edge delivery, and traffic management ecosystem. 

• Design, implement, and optimize multi-CDN architectures supporting large-scale media delivery, streaming, and digital experiences. 

• Establish standards for traffic steering, origin architecture, cache optimization, failover, resiliency, and performance optimization. 

• Architect intelligent CDN selection and traffic routing strategies based on performance, availability, geography, cost, and business requirements. 

• Lead the evaluation and implementation of CDN switching and traffic management platforms including NS1 Pulsar and other multi-CDN orchestration solutions. 

• Drive vendor strategy, technical relationships, and platform optimization across CDN providers. 

• Develop strategies to improve viewer experience while optimizing CDN utilization and delivery costs. 

Streaming Platform Engineering 

• Lead architecture and engineering efforts supporting live streaming, video-on-demand (VOD), FAST channels, authenticated streaming, TV Everywhere, and digital media services. 

• Define best practices for video delivery performance, reliability, scalability, and operational excellence. 

• Architect solutions supporting large-scale streaming events, sports broadcasts, breaking news coverage, and premium content delivery. 

• Partner with media engineering teams to improve startup times, buffering performance, playback quality, latency, and overall viewer experience. 

• Establish technical standards for media origins, packaging services, playback services, and content distribution platforms. 

Media Delivery & Video Technologies 

• Serve as the technical expert for video streaming technologies and protocols including: 

• HLS 

• MPEG-DASH 

• CMAF 

• Adaptive Bitrate Streaming (ABR) 

• Low-Latency Streaming 

• DRM and content protection technologies 

• Guide architectural decisions related to packaging, transcoding, manifest generation, media origins, playback optimization, and content protection. 

• Evaluate and implement emerging media delivery technologies and streaming standards. 

• Collaborate with media operations teams to improve platform scalability and resiliency. 

DNS, Edge Services & Internet Performance 

• Architect and optimize global DNS and traffic management solutions supporting media delivery at internet scale. 

• Design solutions leveraging advanced DNS-based traffic steering, real-user measurement (RUM), synthetic monitoring, and performance-based routing. 

• Optimize DNS, traffic routing, load balancing, edge services, and internet-facing infrastructure. 

• Evaluate and implement intelligent routing strategies that improve availability, performance, and operational resiliency. 

• Design highly resilient architectures capable of supporting major traffic spikes, breaking news events, and large-scale live streaming events. 

Observability, Reliability & Operations 

• Define metrics, SLIs, SLOs, and operational standards for media delivery platforms. 

• Develop observability strategies that provide visibility into streaming quality, CDN performance, origin health, traffic patterns, and end-user experience. 

• Lead incident analysis and performance investigations involving streaming services, CDN platforms, and edge infrastructure. 

• Drive operational excellence and reliability engineering practices across media delivery platforms. 

Cloud & Infrastructure Integration 

• Partner with cloud engineering teams to ensure streaming platforms are integrated with AWS infrastructure and cloud-native services. 

• Define architectures supporting media workflows running in AWS, including storage, processing, delivery, and observability. 

• Collaborate on automation, infrastructure as code, and deployment strategies supporting media delivery services. 

• Support modernization efforts that improve scalability, reliability, and operational efficiency. 

Technical Leadership 

• Serve as a principal-level technical leader across engineering and media technology organizations. 

• Mentor engineers and architects on streaming, CDN, traffic management, and internet-scale delivery architectures. 

• Lead architecture reviews and establish engineering standards and best practices. 

• Evaluate emerging technologies, industry trends, and vendor capabilities to inform long-term strategy. 

• Act as a trusted advisor to engineering leadership and business stakeholders. 

Qualifications

•  Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience. 
•  10+ years of experience in streaming, CDN, media delivery, network architecture, internet-scale platform engineering, or related technical leadership roles. 
• Deep expertise designing and operating multi-CDN delivery architectures. 
• Extensive experience supporting large-scale streaming and video delivery platforms. 
• Significant hands-on experience with CDN providers including: 
  • Akamai 
  • Fastly 
  • Amazon CloudFront 
  • Cloudflare 
• Experience implementing CDN traffic steering, traffic management, and intelligent failover strategies. 
• Strong understanding of CDN economics, performance optimization, cache efficiency, origin protection, and traffic engineering. 
• Experience with traffic management and CDN orchestration platforms including: 
  • NS1 Pulsar 
  • NS1 Connect 
  • Cedexis 
  • Catchpoint 
  • Similar multi-CDN switching and traffic management technologies 
• Strong understanding of: 
  • DNS 
  • HTTP/S 
  • TLS 
  • Global traffic management 
  • Load balancing 
  • Internet routing concepts 
  • Anycast architectures 
• Deep expertise with: 
  • HLS 
  • MPEG-DASH 
  • CMAF 
  • Adaptive Bitrate Streaming 
  • DRM technologies 
  • Video packaging and transcoding workflows 
• Experience operating highly available systems supporting large audiences and high-volume traffic events. 
• Strong understanding of AWS and cloud-native architectures. 
• Excellent communication, collaboration, and technical leadership skills. 

Additional Information 

Location: New York City, NY or Englewood Cliffs, NJ - (Hybrid – 3 days onsite) 

Employees based in our Englewood Cliffs office have access to a variety of convenient on-site services and amenities, including free employee parking, complimentary electric vehicle charging stations, an on-site fitness center with locker rooms and towel service, and dry-cleaning drop-off and pick-up.

To support an easier commute, shuttle service is also available to and from the Englewood Cliffs campus, with pickup locations across Manhattan’s East Side and West Side, Brooklyn, Hoboken, Jersey City, Newark, and Secaucus.

Additional Information

As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with a VERSANT Media employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. VERSANT Media'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 candidateaccessibility@versantmedia.com.

VERSANT Media is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. We include a good faith pay range for each position to comply with applicable state and local pay transparency laws and to promote equity across our organization. Actual compensation will be based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, experience, and location and may include additional forms of compensation and benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, etc.

VERSANT Media is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at VERSANT via-email, the Internet, or in any form and/or method without a valid written Statement of Work in place for this position from VERSANT's Talent Acquisition team will be deemed the sole property of VERSANT. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by VERSANT as a result of the referral or through other means.