TV React Developer (Roku) [NY]

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.

Roku at Philo

The Roku team at Philo is responsible for building our product experience on one of the biggest platforms in streaming TV: Roku streaming devices and Roku-enabled smart TVs. Philo’s Roku app has been a crucial platform for us since the Philo service first launched – Roku was our first “10-foot” (streaming TV device) platform and is one of our largest platforms by minutes watched. Historically, Roku has also been one of our primary platforms for prototyping nascent Philo features.

We’re a small autonomous team building apps with high engagement and millions of installs, which collectively are responsible for a huge fraction of the billions of minutes watched on Philo each year. We are passionate about crafting the best possible UX to connect our users with the content they love, providing a seamless viewing experience while surprising them with new features and capabilities. We’re highly focused on optimizing the 10-Foot Experience, and you will directly contribute to that effort. By joining the Roku team, you will be working on TV platforms at a TV company (📺📺📺📺👩‍💻📺📺📺📺), allowing you to make a large impact on Philo product design and development.

Recent projects on our Roku platform have included:

• Building the Philo Connect feature, a cross-platform second-screen experience that lets you fully control your large screen (“Ten foot”) viewing experience from your smartphone, maintaining a synchronized playback session that lets you browse for new content while controlling your current content playback. This technology is also the building block for upcoming co-viewing features.
• Leading development of the In-Player Browse feature at Philo. In-Player Browse provides a seamless viewing experience by allowing you to browse Philo content while playback continues in the background.
• Open sourcing our React-like BrightScript framework for Roku. It has been built and used internally for the Philo app for years, and now we’re proud to be open sourcing it to the small yet mighty community of Roku developers.
• Adopting Instant Resume early (before it was available publically to the Roku developer community). This feature allows our Roku app to resume exactly where a user left off by having the Roku OS cache the app state and restore it immediately the next time the app is launched. We work closely with the Roku team and often have early access to new platform features; we were excited to be able to offer this performance speedup to our users.

About you

Are you ready to grow your UI skills beyond the browser and into the living room? If you are a frontend developer looking for a new challenge, join Philo to help us build our Roku and Smart TV apps. No previous Roku app experience is required -- our in-house React BS framework leverages React and Redux architecture patterns to structure our native Roku app written in BrightScript. If you’re a React hacker who cares deeply about writing quality code, using the latest tools & technologies to push the envelope of what’s possible, then you share the same background as our entire Roku dev team and will ramp up quickly in our codebase. We would love to talk to you!

As a Roku engineer, you will be responsible for:

• Building the Philo experience on Roku devices
• Contributing to UX design decisions using your domain expertise
• Helping the Philo set-top box team grow
• Helping expand Philo’s 10-Foot experience to other platforms

We are looking for candidates who have:

• Experience with React/Redux UI design concepts and modern frontend development practices
• 4 years of frontend or UI experience
• 2 years of React experience
• Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or closely related field 

A strong candidate might also have one or more of these:

• Experience with Redux, BrightScript, SceneGraph, or other Roku APIs
• Familiarity with the Roku ecosystem, including capabilities, limitations, and best practices across devices
• Experience with React Native, Flutter, or using web technologies on any non-browser platform
• Development experience with video playback, cross-device interoperability (e.g. casting), or other 10-foot, connected TV platforms in general (e.g. Roku, Samsung or LG Smart TVs, FireTV, Android TV or Apple TV).

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 FireTV, Roku, iOS, Apple TV, and web), while delivering a large variety of content to our users. 

Today there are over 60 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
Compensation: Includes competitive salary, 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
• Flexible working hours
• Generous paid parental leave
• Unlimited paid time off for vacation and sick leave
• $2000 annual vacation bonus (we pay you to take a two week vacation)
• $5000 annually for professional development and educational assistance
• $500 “TV stipend” for new employees to upgrade their home watching setup
• Dog-friendly office
• And much more!

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