Software Engineer

We’re hiring a junior/mid software engineer with grit to work on the core of Wowza Streaming Engine — a large, performance-critical Java media server with a C/C++ transcoder underneath. You don’t need to be a video expert yet; you need to want to become one, learn fast, and use modern AI tooling (Aider or Claude Code) to punch above your weight.

The job

Wowza Streaming Engine powers live and on-demand video for customers in 100+ countries — live events, education, healthcare, government. The engine is a big, mature Java codebase (with a native C/C++ transcoding layer) that handles real-time media at scale, where a pause at the wrong moment means someone’s live stream stutters.

You’ll be working inside that engine codebase. That means:

• Building core features — designed for testability and scale, reviewed by engineers who’ve been doing streaming for a long time and will actually teach you.
• Debugging real customer problems — the kind where you read logs, form a hypothesis, reproduce it, and fix it. This is where you’ll learn the most.
• Reading a lot of existing code before you write new code. The codebase is large and parts of it are old; navigating it well (and using tools like Claude Code to navigate it faster) is a considerable part of the job.
• Writing tests and caring whether your change actually works — not just whether it compiles.
• Growing into the video domain: codecs (H.264/HEVC/AV1), streaming protocols (RTMP, HLS, MPEG-DASH, WebRTC, SRT), packaging, transcoding, the JNI boundary between Java and native code. We’ll help you get you there; you bring the passion and curiosity.

Requirements

What we need

• Solid fundamentals in Java or a similar language — roughly 1–4 years of real, hands-on development. The engine is Java and that’s what you’ll write here, but if you’re coming from a kindred language (C#, Kotlin, Scala), that’s fine — the fundamentals transfer. You understand objects, collections, exceptions, and have at least a general understanding of threads and know why they’re dangerous.
• Grit. You don’t bounce off a hard problem or a big unfamiliar codebase. You dig, you ask good questions, you come back with what you found — not just “it doesn’t work.”
• Real experience with AI coding tools — Claude Code, or similar agentic tooling. Not “I tried Copilot once”: you use these tools daily as a lever, you read and verify what they produce, and you know when not to trust them. You experiment different workflow, refine your harness and make your AI context better every day.This is how a junior/mid engineer catches up quickly on a codebase this size, and we treat it as a first-class skill.
• Fast, honest learning. You’ll be surrounded by concurrency, JVM performance, native interop, and 20 years of streaming standards. Nobody expects you to know it on day one; everybody expects you to be visibly further along each month.
• Ownership of quality. You test your own work, you care about the person debugging your code in two years, and you say so plainly when something is broken.

What’s a big bonus (not required)

• Any video/streaming exposure — codecs, FFmpeg or GStreamer, streaming protocols, a side project that pushed pixels. Even hobbyist-level counts; it tells us the domain excites you.
• C/C++ reading ability — enough to follow the native transcoder code across the JNI boundary.
• Concurrency / performance work — thread dumps, profilers, heap analysis, or just war stories.
• Open-source contributions of any kind — they show us how you work when nobody’s assigning tickets.

What you’ll get out of it

This is a role where the ceiling is high and the domain is deep. In your first couple of years you can realistically go from “solid Java developer” to someone who understands low-latency media delivery end to end — a skill set that is rare, in demand, and genuinely hard to acquire anywhere that isn’t shipping a real streaming server. You’ll do it alongside senior engineers who own the transcoder, the protocols, and the packaging pipelines, and who expect to hand you real work — not busywork.

Benefits

• Generous Paid Time Off
• Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance (effective Day 1)
• 401(k) with strong company match
• Dependent Care FSA
• Employer-paid Life Insurance and AD&D
• Voluntary Life Insurance (Employee/Spouse/Child)
• Paid Parental Leave
• Short-Term and Long-Term Disability
• Training & Development opportunities
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

Who we are

Wowza Media Systems is a Colorado-based global leader in video streaming software. Our technology powers live and on-demand video delivery for education, healthcare, enterprise, gaming, government, and more — reaching customers in over 100 countries. Backed by Clearhaven Partners, we continue to grow by pushing innovation in scalable, low-latency video streaming.

Why join Wowza?

At Wowza, you’ll be part of a fast-paced, mission-driven team working on solutions that power critical real-world applications — from live-streaming graduations to helping parents monitor NICU care. We encourage ownership, collaboration, and innovation while providing a supportive, global team environment.

Bottom line: if you’re early in your career, hungry, good with Java or similar language, fluent with AI-assisted development, and the idea of learning how live video actually works excites you — we want to talk to you.