Why This Job is Featured on The SaaS Jobs
This Senior Software Engineer role stands out in SaaS because it sits at the intersection of product engineering and real-world customer operations, a common pattern in scale-ups selling infrastructure-grade platforms. Bitmovin’s Series C stage and API-driven video encoding stack signal a mature SaaS product with enterprise usage, where reliability, integration depth, and cloud-scale performance are central to the work.
For a long-term SaaS career, the role builds durable strengths that translate across platform companies: shipping core features while also learning how production systems behave under customer load, incident pressure, and integration constraints. The remit naturally develops judgment around observability, debugging distributed services, and closing the loop from field issues into roadmap and documentation, which is a key feedback cycle in successful SaaS engineering organisations.
It is best suited to senior engineers who prefer end-to-end ownership and can switch between sprint delivery and customer-facing problem solving without losing engineering rigor. The setup also fits professionals comfortable collaborating asynchronously across time zones, and those who want their technical decisions to be informed by how enterprise customers actually deploy and operate a SaaS product.
The section above is editorial commentary from The SaaS Jobs, provided to help SaaS professionals understand the role in a broader industry context.
Job Description
Location: Denver
Tech Stack: C++/Java, Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, Azure
Team Size: 10 Engineers (EU-based)
Travel: up to 25%
Bitmovin is a global Series-C SaaS scale-up that provides award-winning video streaming technology to world-renowned brands and managed service providers. Our solution suite consists of Live and VOD Encoding, a Multi-Platform Player, and Analytics platform; enabling content owners to redefine the viewer experience through API-based workflow optimization, fast turnaround, and scalability.
We have seen great success and created great momentum in the market. This is down to our products, ecosystem, but ultimately our people who love video streaming.
“We are constantly seeking out forward thinking individuals who want to shape the future of video… come and work with us!”
Stefan Lederer, CEO
At Bitmovin we value cognitive diversity and the huge part this plays in not only creating a global culture second to none, but in how this underpins our ability to create truly representative, Emmy award winning products. Diversity in all its forms is encouraged and celebrated at Bitmovin; everyone has a role to play in helping us shape the future of video.
Why will your impact matter?
At Bitmovin, we’re redefining how the world streams video. Our Emmy award-winning technology powers video for household names like Red Bull Media House, RTL, and Technicolor — and we’re just getting started.
You'll be a senior engineer on our Encoding team, shipping production code in the core encoding product (Java/Kotlin, C++) that runs at massive cloud scale (VOD and live, AV1/HEVC).
Our engineering team is in Europe. You'll be our senior engineer on the ground in the US: contributing in the team's sprints, and owning the technical relationship with our largest US media and streaming customers during hours when Europe is offline. It's a real engineering role with direct customer ownership, and it's the first of its kind at Bitmovin, so you'll shape how it works.
This is the first Forward Deployed Engineer at Bitmovin — a greenfield role where you'll define the playbook, not inherit one.
You'll sit inside our Encoding engineering team, shipping production code in its sprints, while being the technical face of Bitmovin for our marquee US media and streaming customers. When Europe is offline, you're the one keeping US enterprise accounts moving: triaging encoding issues, driving incidents to resolution or a clean handover, and turning what you learn in the field into better product.
What you’ll do:
- Contribute production code to the encoding stack (Java/Kotlin, C++) as a full member of the Encoding team's sprints
- Own our US enterprise accounts technically during EU off-hours: triage and troubleshoot encoding issues, drive incidents to resolution or a clean handover
- Debug live, distributed systems under real customer pressure: log analysis, error diagnosis, network traces, reproducing issues from limited information
- Travel to customer sites to support integrations, run technical workshops, and handle escalations
- Feed what you learn in the field back into sprint planning and the product roadmap
What success looks like (6–12 months):
- You're shipping production code in the Encoding team's sprints, not just triaging issues
- You've become the trusted US technical contact for our largest media and streaming accounts, and off-hours response times have visibly improved
- You've defined a repeatable playbook for triage, resolve-vs-escalate, and clean handovers to the EU team
- You've run at least one on-site customer integration or workshop end to end
- Field learnings from your accounts have shaped sprint planning or the roadmap at least once
- The EU team trusts you to own US hours solo. Your async updates are clear enough that Europe picks up where you left off without friction.
- You've built a clear picture of how customers actually use our product day to day, and turned it into documentation the product and engineering teams actually rely on.
What can you bring
Must-Have Experience:
- 5+ years of software engineering experience at a senior level, strong in Java or C++, able to contribute production code in the encoding team's sprints
- 2+ years in a customer-facing technical role (solutions architecture, professional services, forward deployed, or named-account support)
- Cloud experience (AWS and/or GCP), Docker, and hands-on experience running and debugging scalable distributed services
- Strong troubleshooting on live customer systems: log analysis, error diagnosis, network traces, reproducing issues from limited information
- Open to AI-assisted development workflows and comfortable using AI tools like Claude Code
- Excellent written and verbal English, with a track record of communicating credibly with enterprise engineering teams
- High autonomy: comfortable owning issues end-to-end during US hours while the EU team is offline, with sound judgment on when to escalate vs. resolve
- Based on the US East Coast or in Denver, and willing to travel to customer sites regularly
- You must already have the right to work in the United States.
Nice-to-Have:
- Video streaming domain knowledge: codecs (H.264/HEVC, ideally AV1), container formats, HLS/DASH, OTT encoding workflows
- Prior forward-deployed, solutions architect, or professional services experience at a SaaS or media-tech vendor
- Experience with Bitmovin or competing encoding platforms (AWS MediaConvert/Elemental, Harmonic, MediaKind)
- Live streaming and 24/7 operations experience: incident management, on-call
You don’t have experience with all the points above? Don’t worry, we will support you with learning, training, and coaching on the job.
Why do this at Bitmovin
There is a lot on offer here:
Apply for the role, and let’s get talking!
