Software Engineer, Streaming Media

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Sauron protects your family and home, bringing the innovations of autonomous robots and self-driving cars to residential security. Our team is led by veteran entrepreneurs and roboticists, alumni of Tesla, Apple, and Google. Sauron has raised a $22M seed round led by A
* and Atomic with participation from other angel investors and leading venture capital firms, including 8VC. We are a small, dedicated team of fewer than 50 people. We believe every hire fundamentally shapes our culture and performance. Every new team member is a force multiplier, and we're looking for partners in building a company we are all proud of.

We are hiring a Streaming Media Software Engineer to architect and build the video streaming pipeline powering Sauron's next-generation security devices. You will work across embedded systems, video processing, and streaming protocols to deliver low-latency, rock-solid video from a distributed network of intelligent devices.

This is a hands‑on role with significant ownership and the chance to define the technical direction of our media stack from day one.

• Designing and implementing video streaming features across embedded devices and backend systems.
• Building and optimizing real‑time video pipelines including encoding, transport, and playback.
• Integrating streaming protocols such as RTSP, HLS, DASH, and WebRTC depending on device and system needs.
• Working closely with hardware engineers to tune performance for sensors, compute modules, and accelerators.
• Improving media reliability, latency, and quality under challenging network and environmental conditions.
• Owning features end‑to‑end including architecture, implementation, bring‑up, testing, and iterative improvement.
• Creating tools, telemetry, and observability for video quality and performance monitoring.
• Contributing to an engineering culture that prizes clarity, ownership, and relentless execution.

• Exceptionally good judgement. You tend to be right often and make very few mistakes.
• High‑intensity. You prefer high‑pressure, high‑accountability environments.
• Strong intellectual firepower. You cut through noise quickly and get to correct answers.
• First principles thinker. You break problems down to fundamentals and build from the ground up.
• Bias toward action. You drive progress without waiting for perfect clarity.
• Systems thinker who can navigate tightly coupled hardware and software systems.
• You have built or shipped streaming features before, particularly on constrained or embedded platforms.
• You thrive with autonomy and enjoy owning details across the full lifecycle of a feature.
• You don't say that’s someone else’s job. You are energized by responsibility.
• You are currently in San Francisco or willing to relocate for in‑person work.
• You love building culture with a small, world‑class team.

• Strong experience building software for embedded devices in C/C++.
• Background in real‑time video processing, encoding, and quality tuning.
• Familiarity with streaming protocols such as RTSP, HLS, DASH, RTP, or WebRTC.
• Experience with hardware optimizations for video including GPU, DSP, ISP, or hardware encoder blocks.
• Understanding of networking fundamentals relevant to media transport.
• Experience with GStreamer is a plus.
• Experience with AWS or other cloud platforms.
• Experience with consumer electronics is a plus.
• Experience bringing up new hardware or working directly with camera modules, sensors, or low‑level drivers is a plus.
• BS/MS in CS, CE, EE or equivalent experience.

The base pay range for this role is $180,000 – $225,000 per year.

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