Lead Technologist

About the DPP:

The DPP is the media industry’s business network. It’s a membership organisation comprising 400+ companies across the media industry - from production and post-production, to broadcasters and content platforms, plus technology and services companies.

We work with big name content providers like BBC, Disney, Channel 4, Sky, ViacomCBS, VICE, and WarnerMedia, as well as tech giants like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Avid, and Adobe. Our small but dedicated staff co-ordinate and amplify the expertise of these great companies to generate insight, enable change, and create market opportunity.

We’re a company that cares a great deal about our values. We drive the industry forward on issues like sustainability and diversity. As a small team, we’re collaborative and open, with a high degree of autonomy, and very flexible working practices.

About the Role:

We’re looking for a Lead Technologist to join our team, working to the CTO. They will combine experience and expertise in media technology systems and workflows with the ability to think strategically, and to work with diverse stakeholders.

The successful candidate will play a key role in shaping and delivering the DPP’s technical work. That means they’ll be involved in delivering the technology strategy for the media industry, learning from and helping organisations across the globe and across the content supply chain.

The Lead Technologist will be involved with all aspects of the DPP’s technical work, including:

• DPP technology strategy
  • Working closely with the CTO, advising on where the DPP should focus our work to deliver maximum benefit to member companies
  • Working with DPP member companies to share our strategy, advise them on industry developments, and learn from their experiences and their plans
• Technical project delivery
  • Working alongside a Project Manager, lead delivery of the DPP’s technical projects
  • Identifying key sponsor(s) who are committed to implementing the outputs of the project in their own organisation
  • Leading meetings and working groups to collate requirements, design solutions, and facilitate agreement between companies
• Authoring Specifications and Recommendations
  • Based on the input solicited from members, drafting key technical outputs, such as Specifications, Recommendations, Guidance, and best practices
  • Working with the CTO and member companies to have those outputs reviewed, iterated, improved, and published
• Industry liaison
  • Working with partner organisations such as MovieLabs, IMF Users Group, and SMPTE, to ensure alignment of our respective outputs where appropriate
  • Joining technical working groups in those organisations, contributing on behalf of the DPP and our member companies
• Driving adoption
  • Working with the DPP’s Marketing Manager to plan and deliver communications about our work and our outputs
  • Summarising the important points or business benefits of our work in a way that’s appropriate for senior managers and other senior stakeholders
  • Identifying ways to encourage adoption and drive awareness, for example through blog posts, events, or by organising and managing hackathons and plugfests
• Supporting implementers
  • Assisting vendors (such as software companies) who are implementing our specifications and recommendations, advising their product managers and engineers on both the customer benefits, and the technical details
  • Advising content companies on adoption of our technology recommendations in their supply chains
• Delivering implementation resources
  • In order to facilitate adoption of our technical outputs, the DPP often needs to deliver sample media files, sample data sets, reference software tools, and so on. It is not expected that the Lead Technologist will necessarily have the required skills in software development or low-level data manipulation to achieve this themselves; where necessary they might define the requirements and work with / manage third party contractors to deliver these outputs

In addition, as a key member of the DPP team, the successful candidate will play an active role in the organisation’s activities. For example, this might include supporting our events, or account managing DPP member companies.

It’s an exciting opportunity for the right candidate to apply their technical capability to challenging problems, while expanding their strategic thinking and exposure to the broader media industry.

About you:

By definition, the Lead Technologist will spend time working in areas that are new to them; indeed some of the work will be on the leading edge, so it’ll be new to everyone involved.

Therefore, while strong knowledge of relevant areas of media technology is advantageous, candidates will not be expected to be experts. More important is the enthusiasm and ability to act autonomously to learn new technologies and workflows as required.

It’s most important that you have good technical capability, as we’ll be able to teach you more about media workflows, technology strategy, and the industry as a whole.

Attitude & aptitude

The DPP is a small team, and every member of staff has a key part to play. Therefore, we’re looking for someone with:

• A self-starting and enthusiastic attitude
• The ability to work autonomously to deliver success, while being an engaged part of the team
• A strong focus on the high-level deliverables

Analytical thinking

We’re looking for an engineering mindset; that is to say the desire to solve problems, and to approach them analytically. Candidates should have:

• Ability to explore abstract problems, breaking them into manageable pieces
• Ability to communicate the problem space and lead delivery of the solution
• Ability to think strategically too, relating problems to the DPP’s strategic objectives

Communication

The Lead Technologist will draft technical documents and other outputs, and will communicate with a range of stakeholders. Therefore, written and verbal communication skills are essential. We will look for:

• Ability to communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
• Ability to work with engineers and operations people
• Ability to communicate appropriately with senior stakeholders

Knowledge and experience

Candidates should have relevant knowledge and understanding of at least some of the key areas we work in. These might include:

• Video production and/or distribution workflows
• The business and commercial context for media technologies
• Digital video technologies such as codecs, wrappers, metadata, etc.
• Video streaming, IP video, network delivery

It is desirable - though not essential - to have some hands-on experience with relevant technologies. For example:

• Media and metadata files such as MXF (including AS-11) and IMF (including TSP 2121)
• Data formats such as XML and JSON
• Cloud infrastructure configuration and management (e.g. running VMs, databases, networking, and other cloud resources)
• APIs (e.g. using tools such as PostMan to experiment with and interrogate APIs)
• Scripting (e.g. in Bash, Python, etc)
• Version control systems (e.g. Git)