Introductory paragraph
We’re a video platform startup for sports clubs and organizations.
About us
My name: Denis
My roles: (Interim) CTO, Lead Dev, Operations and everything else (way too much)
Company name: (can share in PM)
Website:
Company info and history:
The company is and has been going through a transformation recently. Since I’ve joined we’ve set a new course in terms of tech goals and IT stack and infrastructure and are moving from the legacy stack (Java, manual deployment, little automation, very resource intensive) to a new stack based on the best tools for the job, aiming for a high degree of automation and robustness. I chose Elixir as the main programming language for the new development, and it’s been a great pleasure so far, and I expect that to continue and only deepen as we keep progressing. The other elements of the stack are Kubernetes as another distributed systems backbone, in addition to the Erlang VM’s capabilities here, containers for (almost) everything, GlusterFS for video storage – and we’re not running in the cloud, but rather on bare metal, mostly because we need to be able to push out and transcode a lot of (video) traffic for a low enough price to not have to face exploding infrastructure costs.
About the job
What we’re looking for here are developers with fire in their belly, who like to get things done, who like to make sure that they work on and deliver great stuff that works, who are driven to do what needs to be done. Who enjoy working in a positive and empowering environment, and who feel propelled to create and enhance those. Who like to feel great about the work that they accomplish. Who like living and working on the leading edge.
The company and our (read: my) current development efforts are still in an early phase. There is a basic release about to be ready in the next few weeks, and there are still many parts that haven’t been fully figured out yet (eg. releases & build process), so there’s lots of space for taking initiative and driving many of the important aspects of a successful project in development as well as operations.
At this point we’re just looking to establish initial contact with some interested developers and DevOps people, see what follows from those conversations. We’re open for anything that works for both sides. It could be consulting on any of the open questions of successfully deploying the first complex distributed Elixir app on Kubernetes, it could be just executing on some of the (initially) minor tasks, it could also be full-blown jumping-onto-the-moving-bandwagon and taking charge of any of the most important aspects or subprojects.
The specific goal we have for development at this point is: Successfully finish up, deploy and roll out the API-compatible reimplementation of the legacy backend systems.
Overall the goal is to create a highly cost-effective, reliable, resilient, performant distributed video platform (ingress, transcoding & processing, storage, distribution) running on bare metal infrastructure in a highly automated fashion, and which then could be expanded well beyond sports videos and into many other areas that deal with high volumes of video traffic that at this point simply is not feasible with cloud-based solutions.
Eventually, once the business is working comfortably, I imagine the company open-sourcing the core of the video platform so that there could finally exist something modern and desirable in that space, which is vacant at present. (We would have happily used existing software instead of rolling our own here.)
About the interview process
Talking to me on Skype. About you, about me & the company, about ways we may want to work together. About specific problems and potential solutions.
If you’d rather avoid a call and only communicate via text chat, then I am open for that as well. If we find we can communicate effectively in that way, then it may be possible to find an arrangement that works that way as well.
Further info
Please get in touch if any of this resonates with you.
