Streaming video content on a smart TV with remote control

Available for work

Software Engineer

I design and ship resilient software at scale, from React Native apps on mobile and TV to the cloud infrastructure, APIs and video players behind services millions rely on every day.

Cardiff, UK·15+ years experience·React Native · Streaming·Contract or permanent

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Live · OTNet circle player

About

Samuel East

Senior Software Engineer with 15+ years experience, specialising in media streaming. Cardiff, UK.

I have been working in software engineering for over 15 years, with a deep focus on media streaming, running my own company and building services across the industry. Most recently I was on the player team at Plex, working in React Native and TypeScript with native Swift and Kotlin underneath, shipping one codebase to iOS, tvOS, Android, Android TV, Fire TV, Samsung Tizen and web. Before that, two years at 3SS building Vodafone's next generation set top box from the ground up, and two years at NBC PeacockTV across PeacockTV, SkyShowTime, and NowTV.

My role at Plex was eliminated in October 2026 when the company cut 24 positions and restructured its development teams, so I am available immediately.

I specialise in video player architecture, React Native apps on mobile and TV, DRM integration (Widevine, PlayReady, FairPlay), adaptive streaming (HLS, DASH, CMAF), and cross platform delivery across iOS, Android, web, Samsung Tizen, LG WebOS, Xfinity, and custom STB hardware.

Ad tech is a big part of that. I've worked with server side ad insertion (SSAI) on AWS Elemental MediaTailor since building it into the S3Bubble workflow, then on live SSAI at NBC PeacockTV and FAST channel ads at Plex. OTNet, my own platform, runs its own SSAI stitcher for live and VOD across HLS and DASH with DRM, SCTE-35 ad signalling and MediaTailor channel assembly.

I ship reliable, performant video experiences at scale. Whether it's reducing video start times, solving playback issues on constrained devices, or architecting a player that handles live, VOD, catchup, and recordings, I deliver.

Agentic AI Engineering

Agentic AI is how I build software now. At Plex the whole engineering workflow ran on it. A Linear ticket went into Claude Code, an agent planned and wrote the change, AI reviewed the pull request, and an engineer signed it off. We shipped production React Native, Swift and Kotlin that way every day, so this isn't something I've only tried on side projects.

Working like that taught me that agents are fast but not careful. Left alone, they duplicate logic, ignore the patterns already in the codebase and slowly wear the architecture down one pull request at a time. So I treat the architecture as my job. I set the boundaries and the contracts between layers and platforms, and I keep the agents working inside them.

Skills and plugins are how I make that stick. An agent will happily solve the same problem a different way every time, so I write the way a team works into Claude skills, plugins and MCP tooling: how to trace the code before changing it, how to keep platforms in parity, how to test and verify a change. Every engineer and every agent then works the same way, and the output stays consistent and easy to review.

Testing holds it all together. I write the tests first, so each agent has a clear definition of done, and I run agents in parallel with a plan agreed before any code is touched. Nothing lands until the E2E tests and on device checks pass. Along the way I question the decisions agents make, catch the regressions they introduce and push back when an AI review invents a fix for something that was never broken. That's what lets me take a feature from ticket to production cleanly, with code that's small, readable and easy for the next engineer to pick up.

Outside of work I built my own AI suite, a desktop app in Rust and TypeScript (vybecoding.sh), and I use it to build iOS apps in Swift, Android apps in Kotlin, Electron desktop apps and web platforms that run on a single API.

After 15 years as a software engineer, working with Claude and Codex feels like running my own dev team. The experience is what lets me direct that team well, and that combination is what I bring to a role.

Skills

Languages & Frameworks

TypeScriptJavaScriptReactReact NativeNode.jsSwiftKotlinAngularElectronJSLightningJS

React Native

New ArchitectureTurboModulesNitro ModulesReanimatedGesture HandlerZustandReact QueryMetroMaestro E2EStorybookpnpm / Turborepo monorepo

Video Players

Shaka PlayerAVPlayerExoPlayer / androidx-mediaKSPlayer (FFmpeg)DashJSHLS.jsCustom MSECastLabsBitmovinVideoJS

DRM & Protocols

WidevinePlayReadyFairPlayBuyDRMEZDRMSPEKE APICENC / CBCSCMAF

Ad Tech & SSAI

SSAICSAIAWS MediaTailorManifest stitchingSCTE-35VMAPVASTGoogle IMA SDKFAST channelsPause adsLive catch-up

Mobile, TV & STB Platforms

iOStvOSAndroidAndroid TVFire TVSamsung TizenLG WebOSHisense VidaaCustom STBsDVB / OIPF

AWS Media

MediaLiveMediaPackageMediaConvertMediaTailorMediaConnectCloudFormation

AWS Infrastructure

EC2Auto Scaling GroupsELB / ALBRDSVPCBastion HostsS3CloudFrontLambdaIAMRoute 53

Tooling

Git / GitHub / GitLabJiraLinearSentryConvivaJestVitestXcodeAndroid StudioAgile / ScrumClaude CodeMCPCodex

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner

Experience

Broken down by the parts of the video pipeline I've worked on, from encoding through to playback, ads and analytics.

1. Encoding & Processing2. Cloud & Infrastructure3. Delivery & Security4. Ads & Monetisation5. Playback6. Quality & Analytics

Plex

Aug 2026 – Oct 2026 · Permanent

Senior Software Engineer · Player Team (most recent)

Player team engineer on Plex's cross platform React Native client, shipping one TypeScript codebase to iOS, tvOS, Android, Android TV, Fire TV, Samsung Tizen and web, with native Swift and Kotlin underneath. My role was eliminated in October 2026 when Plex cut 24 positions and restructured its development teams, a company wide decision rather than anything to do with the work.

Plex

4Ads & Monetisation

Client side ad insertion driven by VMAP ad tags in Plex's metadata: the player fetches the VMAP and plays the ad breaks alongside the content without touching the stream, using our own ad handling on ExoPlayer and Google's IMA SDK on AVPlayer
Shipped ads on FAST channels: live SSAI stitched into the linear stream, plus a client side pre roll at the front before the channel starts
Carried the ad tag through play queue rebuilds and fixed the ad pod lifecycle, seek blocking and the ad countdown
Worked on pause ads, showing an ad when the viewer pauses playback
Kept ads scoped to Plex's free streaming content, so media from a viewer's own server never carries an ad tag

5Playback

Extracted the native playback layer into a standalone PlexPlayerSDK across Swift and Kotlin, a 134 file refactor, with a reference app and an automated SDK boundary check wired into CI
Worked across three playback engines: AVPlayer and KSPlayer (FFmpeg based) on Apple, ExoPlayer and androidx-media on Android, including engine selection by codec and content type
Rebuilt the seek path so the dpad, the remote's seek buttons and double tap gestures all run one implementation on Apple TV, Fire TV and Android, coalescing bursts of step seeks into a single engine seek to stop playback stalling minutes behind
Fixed seek preview thumbnails so they hold for the whole scrub, and brought them to the remote's seek buttons across both the current and the next player UI
Fixed Android picture in picture rendering and controls in Kotlin, hiding the OSD and fitting the video to the PiP tile
Added a post play overlay over the closing credits, and Siri transport commands that honour the skip interval asked for

6Quality & Analytics

Built plex-test, a Claude Code plugin that drives a real device or simulator through a library, measures start time, seeking and sustained playback against an adb audio counter, then scores the run and renders it in a dashboard
Added playback metrics for the skip buttons

Apps & Engineering

Pinned the Android navigation bar hidden behind the OSD using react-native-edge-to-edge, including a patch to react-native-safe-area-context for a stale inset bug on Android 10
Delivered inside a fully AI driven workflow, writing custom Claude skills, MCP tooling and plugins so generated code stayed reviewable and grounded

3SS

Mar 2024 – Mar 2026 · Contract

Senior Software Engineer · Vodafone

Built Vodafone's next generation set top box from the ground up. Also worked across Yettel, Entel, and OneTV, delivering live, catchup, start over, channel switching, on demand, and recordings. Worked closely with Nagra on DRM and content protection integration. Helped the team hit critical launch deadlines, working remotely from the UK.

Vodafone Yettel Entel OneTV Nagra

3Delivery & Security

Integrated Nagra DRM and content protection
Manifest manipulation for live and catchup streams

5Playback

Architected DVB/OTT playback switching using Shaka Player with seamless protocol handoff
Implemented Live, StartOver, TimeShift, Catchup, VOD, and recording playback with 7 day rolling buffer
Ported STB app to Samsung Tizen with minimal code changes

6Quality & Analytics

Reduced zapping times and improved playback resilience through KPI driven optimisation
Developed stall detection and custom debug UI for memory diagnostics
Created remote development suite using ZeroTier & Raspberry Pi for real time STB access

Apps & Engineering

Built high performance UI with LightningJS optimised for low end STB hardware

NBC PeacockTV

Mar 2022 – Mar 2024 · Contract

Senior Software Engineer

Worked across PeacockTV, SkyShowTime, and NowTV. Focused on video start times, rebuffering reduction, and cross platform delivery at scale.

3Delivery & Security

DASH, HLS and EME implementation across Web, Xfinity, and Samsung

4Ads & Monetisation

Live catch-up on SSAI streams: when stitched ad breaks left the playhead behind live, raised the playback rate to drift it back to the live edge without a hard seek
BrightLine ad integration

5Playback

MSE based playback and mid stream adaptive bitrate capping
AAMP player development for Xfinity X1 platform

6Quality & Analytics

KPI monitoring and performance optimisation using Conviva (VST, VSF)
Memory and CPU profiling on low end Samsung and Xfinity Xi3/Xi6 devices

Apps & Engineering

CVSDK development in TypeScript with Jest and CI integration

S3Bubble

2014 – 2021 · 7 years

Founder & CEO · AWS Certified

Founded and scaled a cloud media streaming platform on AWS, distributing millions of video players monthly via API. Built the full product stack end to end, from encoding tools and DRM protected playback to the underlying Amazon infrastructure: large RDS databases, EC2 Auto Scaling groups behind Elastic Load Balancers, bastion hosts inside hardened VPCs for secure access, and the full AWS Media stack. AWS Certified, with hands on experience running production services at scale.

S3Bubble

1Encoding & Processing

ElectronJS encoding app with multi bitrate HLS/DASH, encryption, subtitles, thumbnails, and bulk upload
CloudFormation & Lambda automated encoding pipeline via MediaConvert

2Cloud & Infrastructure

Architected resilient AWS infrastructure: RDS (MySQL/Postgres) at scale, EC2 Auto Scaling groups, ELB / ALB load balancers, multi AZ VPC with bastion hosts and IAM hardened security
Production live streaming workflow with MediaLive, MediaPackage, and OBS integration
Fully automated CloudFormation stack that spun up complete live streaming setups on demand, covering MediaLive channels, MediaPackage endpoints, IAM, networking, and DRM wiring

3Delivery & Security

Studio approved DRM via SPEKE API with Widevine, PlayReady, FairPlay using BuyDRM and EZDRM

4Ads & Monetisation

Built AWS Elemental MediaTailor server side ad insertion into the streaming workflow, alongside MediaLive and MediaPackage

5Playback

Built and scaled a media streaming API and player serving millions of video players monthly across thousands of sites

Apps & Engineering

AngularJS media streaming application integrated with AWS cloud workflows

Side Projects

OTNet

Bring your own infrastructure streaming platform with server side ad insertion built in. Publishers encode on their own machine, keep content in their own cloud bucket, and ship branded apps to every screen.

Built its own SSAI ad stitcher for live and VOD across HLS and DASH: multi period DASH and discontinuity stitched HLS, reusing encoded segments with no transcoding or segment proxying
DRM aware ad insertion: Chrome can't switch between cenc and cbcs mid stream (decrypt error 3 at the ad boundary), so the ad picker matches protocol, container, encryption scheme and audio layout before stitching, and every possible ad key ID rides in the playback token so rotated ads never fail at the license server
CMAF with one cbcs key covering FairPlay, Widevine and PlayReady from a single set of segments, while DASH defaults to cenc because pre 2018 Tizen and webOS PlayReady 3.x silently fails to decrypt cbcs
SCTE-35 splice_insert cues and ad metadata signalled in HLS (EXT-X-DATERANGE) and DASH (EventStream)
Content and ads served from Cloudflare R2 with zero egress fees, against roughly $0.09/GB on S3, with server verified ad impressions fired from the publisher's own Cloudflare Worker
Linear live channels with DVR, plus AWS MediaTailor channel assembly alongside its own channels and EPG
Desktop encoder for HLS, DASH and CMAF, with Widevine, PlayReady and FairPlay DRM via EZDRM or BuyDRM
TV apps for Samsung Tizen, LG webOS, Android TV and Fire TV

Built with Next.js, AWS MediaTailor, Cloudflare R2 and Workers, Electron, FFmpeg, Shaka Packager, Lightning, SwiftUI, Kotlin

Website Mac Windows TV apps Write-up

Vybe Coding

AI coding terminal. The desktop app runs your coding agents, and the phone app picks up the same sessions so you can keep working away from your desk.