Alabaster Media
Senior Software Engineer
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TL;DR
Location: Hybrid. Our office near Gatwick and your home. Occasional travel where the job needs it, discussed at the time.
Reporting to: Technology Director.
Salary: £54,000 to £70,000 per annum, depending on experience.
Hours: Full time, 40hrs per week, Monday to Friday. Core hours of 10am to 4pm. Sometimes work is needed outside of these hours but overtime is uncommon.
Applications close: Monday 21 September 2026, 11pm BST.
Interviews: Week of 21 September or 28 September 2026.
Start date: December 2026 or January 2027, though we can be flexible for the right person.
Contract Type: 1 year fixed term, possibility of extension depends upon product success.
Who we are
Alabaster Media is a small broadcast engineering company based near Gatwick. We broadly do two things.
We consult
We work with broadcasters, vendors and end clients on IP infrastructure, live contribution and the move from SDI to IP. We have a lot of practical experience in this part of the broadcast engineering sector.
We build
We are launching our own product next year, that is yet to be publicly announced. It is real hardware and real software, at its core: an appliance that takes live video, encodes it, and moves it across the public internet and private networks with low latency, plus a browser interface on the device and a cloud platform managing the fleet.
We are a small team, which means the work is varied and nobody is far from the decisions. You will play a key role in shaping the development of this product and gain satisfaction from seeing your work go out on real hardware that will ultimately support some of the world’s largest televised events.
The role
This is a senior, hands-on development role on our own product, with three main parts to it.
Our product
You will be the senior developer on it, working across the stack with most of your time in the backend and the media path. We are about to restructure the media pipeline to enable more advanced and efficient workflows to take place. That work then lands with you, and where it goes next is yours to shape alongside product engineers who steer the roadmap. It will then be up to you to implement the features: help define sprints and keep the work moving against the product roadmap.
Our foundations
You will be building on our existing groundwork, and we would like the next layer laid properly: test harnesses, continuous integration, code review, release and versioning, and an automated route from a clean unit arriving from our hardware supplier to a primed, flashed device going out of the door. You do not need to arrive with a playbook, but you should know what works and what does not, and have the pragmatism to introduce it in the right order rather than all at once.
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Our team
We are a friendly and approachable team that cares about our time inside and outside work. Whoever takes this role should have an approachable, can-do attitude and be willing to give and receive feedback and share what they know, so that we all perform better. You will not be customer-facing day to day, but you will sometimes be in front of one, and you will be in the conversation about where the product is going. Asking what someone is actually trying to do before deciding how to build it matters here as much as the code does.
Our stack
On the device
- Go control application and a C++ media service, talking over gRPC
- GStreamer, with hardware-accelerated encode/decode on Intel
- REST and WebSocket APIs to a React and TypeScript operator interface built on our own design system
- Linux, systemd and SQLite throughout
In the cloud
- TypeScript monorepo, Node.js
- NestJS on Fastify, PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB, Drizzle
- MQTT for device messaging, mTLS and PKI for device authentication
- React frontend
- Docker
- Caddy
How we build
- Git and GitHub Actions
- Sprints, with priorities reviewed monthly, and mutual code review as the team grows
- AI coding agents where they genuinely help, on scoped work. The design decisions and the review stay with the engineer, and we are not interested in generating code nobody understands
Who we are looking for
The title says senior because that is the level of ownership involved. The ideal individual should meet the following:
- You take a piece of work from a vague problem to something running in front of a customer, and you stay with it.
- You are at home in code you did not write, with decisions you would not have made.
- You can tell an interesting technical problem from the one that has to work before the next demo, and you know when each deserves your time.
- You flag a risk while there is still time to do something about it.
- You explain a trade-off to someone who is not a developer without making them feel stupid.
- You want the foundations built properly, and you know which order to build them in.
What you will need
Essential
- Strong backend experience in a compiled systems language on a production platform. Go and C++ are what we use, and we would expect real depth in at least one and the confidence to get into the other
- Real-time or performance-sensitive work: profiling, concurrency, memory behaviour, and finding where the time actually goes rather than guessing
- Confident on Linux as a development and deployment target, including building against third-party libraries and SDKs
- API and service design, and holding a contract with other developers
- Relational databases, including schema design and migrations
- Enough TypeScript and React to work on a frontend when needed, and the willingness to do it
- A track record of putting engineering practice in place: automated testing, CI, review, releases
- Clear written and spoken English. You will write specs and design notes as often as you write code
- Security-conscious by default, particularly around device authentication and secret handling
- Right to work in the UK
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Desirable
- GStreamer or FFmpeg, including writing or extending elements
- Real-time transport in production: RIST, SRT, MPEG-TS or WebRTC
- Hardware-accelerated media, GPU surface sharing and zero-copy buffer handling, whether Intel or other
- Codecs in practice: H.264, HEVC, AV1 or JPEG XS
- Broadcast, streaming or pro AV domain experience
- Embedded or appliance Linux, firmware update, device provisioning
- MQTT and device fleets, mTLS and PKI
- NestJS, PostgreSQL, Docker
We are happy to teach the broadcast side. We cannot teach the engineering judgement, so that is the part we need met.
Package
- Salary £54,000 to £70,000, depending on experience
- Pension matched up to 5%
- 25 days holiday plus bank holidays, or opt out of bank holidays (except Christmas and Boxing Day) and take 31 days whenever you like
- Discounted gym membership
- Flexible working around core hours of 10am to 4pm
- Ongoing training and professional development
- Company socials
- A real say in a product going to market next year, and the chance to set the standard it is built to
How to apply
Send a CV and answer the questions through the application link: https://tally.so/r/aQMJKX
The process
- Application review. We read applications as they arrive and reply to everyone. Applications close Monday 21st September at 11pm, and sooner if we have enough strong applicants, so apply as soon as possible.
- Technical interview. Online, with us and an experienced developer. Your background, some code to read and talk through, and a design problem. A conversation about thought process, not a whiteboard exam.
- Visit our office. Less formal. See the hardware and the environment, meet the team, and ask us anything before you decide.
Any questions before you apply, email jonathan@alabastermedia.co.uk.
We welcome applications from everyone. If you need any adjustment to the process, please let us know.
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