Philo: TV on the Internet (TVoIP)

At Philo, we’re a group of technology and product people who set out to build the future of television, marrying the best in modern technology with the most compelling medium ever invented — in short, we’re building the TV experience that we’ve always wanted for ourselves. In practice this means leveraging cloud delivery, modern tech stacks, machine learning, and hand-crafted native app experiences on all of our platforms. We aim to deliver a rock solid experience on the streaming basics, while cooking up next generation multi-screen and multi-user playback experiences.

Kotlin Multiplatform at Philo

The Kotlin Multiplatform team creates and maintains a shared business logic layer that is used across 9 platforms (e.g. iOS, Tizen, FireTV, Web, Chromecast, etc.). We’re building the libraries that respond to user input and tell our UI what it should display on 10s of millions of devices, which are collectively responsible for a huge fraction of the billions of minutes watched on Philo each year.

Currently, our Kotlin Multiplatform libraries power our video player, our casting functionality (Philo Connect), and analytics, but we’re in the process of expanding them to cover even more of our app functionality. We leverage the MVI pattern, but our views are outside of the KMM codebase, since we believe UI should be left to the “native” code.

We are a small but growing team of tinkerers, who are comfortable at every level of the frontend stack. On a given day, you might be diving into the details of Kotlin’s `iconv` wrappers, profiling changes to the JS network stack, or writing clean maintainable code that captures complex business logic.

We’re skeptics at Philo - in general, we prefer “boring and battle tested” over “shiny and nascent.” With that said, we also try to use the best tool for the job, and when that tool does not yet exist, we’re not opposed to building it (or contributing to the projects that are building it). Kotlin Multiplatform falls solidly into the second category, and to make it work for our use-case we need to be unafraid of tackling seemingly insurmountable problems. We’re actively working on a number of open source projects to improve the ecosystem and make it usable for all.

Philo engineers own what they build from start to finish and are passionate about continuously delivering delightful features to a huge user base. If you’re a Kotlin hacker who cares deeply about writing quality code and using the latest tools & technologies to push the envelope of what’s possible, we would love to talk to you! 

A strong candidate is:

• 8 years of experience working on frontend app development
• Extremely proficient in Kotlin
• Deeply experienced with structured concurrency and coroutines
• Experienced with Redux/MVI-like patterns
• Familiar with the Android ecosystem, including feature sets and best practices across devices and operating system versions
• Familiar with web technologies, and able to proficiently write and debug JS-based applications
• Familiar with Swift, Objective-C, and the Apple ecosystem

Nice to have:

• A good instinct for product design and UX. Able to take mocks and bring them to life
• Experience with embedded programming and/or working on highly resourced constrained devices
• Experience with video playback
• Experience with GraphQL-based APIs

Interview Process

Step 1: Back-to-Back Calls. A Recruiter Call to learn more about the role and Philo, then an Engineering Call with a KMP Engineer to learn more about your technical background, and to tell you more about our codebase.

Step 2: Technical Screen. For this role, the technical screen will consist of a “take-home” exercise to be completed in Kotlin. The exercise will involve concurrency and socket programming. Note that if you are the maintainer of a major open source project, this step may be skipped at the discretion of the hiring manager.

Step 3: Virtual Onsite. This will consist of five interviews: (1) A demo of our product; (2) a paired programming session where we fix bugs and improve the exercise you submitted during the technical screener; (3) a product-focused interview with a member of our product team; (4); a technical architecture interview that will involve some software design discussions; (5) a soft skills interview.

Step 4: Follow Up Call with Hiring Manager. The hiring manager will collect feedback about the process, and cover any follow ups that interviewers had throughout the rest of the process.

More about Philo

We strive to build engaging and easy to use streaming apps across a large number of platforms (Android Mobile, Android tablets, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, iOS, Apple TV, and web), while delivering a large variety of content to our users. 

Today there are over 70 channels included in our basic package -- our lineup includes many popular cable networks, like A&E, Accuweather, Animal Planet, AXS TV, BBC America, BET, Cheddar, ComedyCentral, CMT, Discovery Channel, Food Network, Game Show Network, Hallmark, HGTV, IFC, INSP,Lifetime, MTV, Newsy, Nickelodeon, OWN, Paramount Network, Sundance, TV One, Vice and VH1. We also offer premium add-on channels from Starz and Epix, and we’re always adding more content!

We’re a company that puts people first — both our subscribers and our team. At Philo, our philosophy is to empower our colleagues to do their best work while supporting each other in pursuing shared goals. We value pragmatism, pride in our work, and passion. We believe in having transparency and openness across all parts of the company. We are committed to diversity and inclusion as we grow the Philo team and shape the future of TV -- we believe that a diverse set of voices and perspectives on our team enables us to innovate faster and create the best experience for our subscribers.

Philo is headquartered in San Francisco, with additional offices in New York and Cambridge, MA. Our leadership team includes a cofounder of Facebook as well as alums of Meraki and HBO. Philo is backed by NEA and industry partners including Discovery, Viacom, AMC, and A&E.

Status: Full-time
Location: Brooklyn, NY or remote within the US
Compensation: Includes annual salary between $162K - $210K depending on experience and location, company stock options and health benefits

We value a diverse and inclusive workplace and we welcome people of different backgrounds, experiences, skills, and perspectives. Philo is an equal opportunity employer. We believe that everyone does their best work when they are supported by each other and the company, and we offer a generous set of benefits to make sure the Philo team is happy and healthy. Here is a sampling of the benefits we offer our team:

• Full health, dental and vision coverage for you and your family
• 401(k) plan with employer contributions (we match 100% of deferrals up to 3% of pay and 50% of the next 2% of pay)
• Flexible working hours
• Up to 20 weeks of fully paid parental leave
• Unlimited paid time off for vacation and sick leave
• $2,000 annual vacation bonus (we pay you to take a two week vacation)
• $5,250 annually for professional development and educational assistance
• $1,250 annual home office TV stipend during first year of employment ($250 annually thereafter)
• $500/month ($6,000/year) bonus for employees who commit to working at least 3 days per week in our offices, plus generous commuter benefits ($315/month towards transit, rideshare, bike rental, or parking at our HQ office in San Francisco)
• Free Gympass subscription — an all-in-one corporate benefit that gives employees the largest selection of gyms, studios, classes, training and wellness apps
• Dog-friendly office
• And much more!

For California Residents: Philo’s CCPA Notice at Collection – Employees, Applicants, Owners, Directors, Officers and Contractors