Sr. Platform Engineer, Media Technology

How You’ll Contribute

The Technology Division creates digital experiences for and delivers information technology services to the National Geographic Society (NGS). From our staff to our constituents, Technology provides the power to amplify NGS’s impact through value-based product delivery, transformational data services, and world-class support and infrastructure services. These services include employee training and technical support, audio/visual production, device management, enterprise architecture, network management, on-premise and cloud computing, information security, identity management, data management and integration, product management, user experience design, software development, systems engineering, and systems administration. Technology comprises five teams: Business Products, Constituent Products, Data Products, Infrastructure & Security, and Technology Support Services.

As part of the Media Technology Team, Sr. Platform Engineers are responsible for understanding and enabling media activities at National Geographic. NGS produces multiple petabytes of new media every year and faces diverse challenges around capturing, producing and distributing media around the world, all while maintaining a world-class archive of physical and digital media. This requires NGS’s Media Technology staff to be well versed in the manipulation, automation and management of media and associated metadata.

The Sr. Platform engineers provide both day-to-day and project-related technology support for the following functions: video production, digital preservation, library and collections management, media ingest, workflow design and implementation, system engineering and administration.

The Sr. Platform Engineers play a key role in continuous improvement by identifying inefficiencies and working with Technology management and teams to devise and implement solutions that improve operational efficiency, delivery predictability, and quality of service.

Your Impact

Your Impact & Responsibilities

Architecture & Engineering (60%)

• Manage the design, development, maintenance, and support of digital asset management platform components, including automation routines and system integrations.

• Develop software components and automated unit tests. Work with DevOps team to maintain and extend build and release pipelines.

• Oversee the creation and maintenance of architectural and operational documentation according to department standards.

• Work closely with customers and product managers to identify and translate functional and non-functional requirements into actionable work, focusing closely on technical feasibility and technology investment choices.

• Works with IT infrastructure and operations teams to ensure that systems are configured and managed with appropriate levels of processing/storage/network capacity, data protection, and security compliance.

Operations & Technical Support (20%)

• Oversee the technical administration duties required to maintain the digital asset management system and Special Collections systems. This includes software upgrades and patch management.

• Define service levels for platform components and ensure appropriate observability in media related systems.  

• Investigate, troubleshoot, and perform root-cause analysis for incidents and problems with systems and automations supporting media activities.  Produce incident reports and conduct incident post-mortem reviews.

• Conduct regularly scheduled reliability assessments; define and execute work plans to improve service availability, reliability, and performance.

Management & Innovation (20%)

• Working in concert with the NGS architects team, provide technical and architectural direction to on- and off-shore software developers.

• Collaborate with delivery managers, product managers, and the Technology management team to maintain and enhance Technology work management processes and best practices, including selecting metrics and setting targets for process improvement.

• Coach and mentor other engineers and participate in one or more of Technology’s communities of practice that support continuous improvement.

• Stay current with advancements in information technology, digital asset management, and agile methodologies.

What You’ll Bring

Minimum Years and Type of Experience

A minimum of 7 years of experience working in diverse, data rich, digital environments; especially cloud platforms and architectures.  Understanding of workflows and complex digital systems. 

Educational Background

A bachelor's degree in Management Information Systems (MIS), Computer Science, or a related field is preferred, but not required. Equivalent experience is acceptable.

Necessary Knowledge and Skills

• Knowledge of and experience with digital asset management systems, digital archive systems, integrated library systems, and collections management software.

• Knowledge of and experience with digital media operations including ingest and distribution, transcoding, compression, workflow design, rights management, and access control.

• Experience with scripting/automation/orchestration and integration with other enterprise platforms in SaaS/PaaS/IaaS environments using APIs. 

• Experience with (Meta)Data in various formats.  Storing, processing and transforming from various sources and destinations.

• Broad knowledge of server, database, and storage infrastructures both on-premise and in the cloud, and ability to perform hands-on database and server administration.

• Familiarity with information security and IT service management concepts and processes. 

• Knowledge of and experience with shell scripting and service administration on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

• Experience developing applications, automations and scripts using Python and/or NodeJS. Capable of instrumenting and debugging processes, including writing and maintaining automated tests.

• Knowledge of and experience using work management software such as Jira, Monday.com, Wrike, Asana, etc.

• Solid written and verbal communication skills, able to explain technical problems to non-technical audiences.

• Extensive experience with agile software development methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban, including working with remote and hybrid teams.

• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.

• Experience with Git and distributed source control management concepts including branching, merging, and patching.

Desired Qualifications

• Experience working in a special collections or university environment.

• Experience using IaC tooling and principles for provisioning infrastructure; particularly Terraform

• Experience with NLE Software and workflows including Adobe Premiere, etc.

Supervision

None

This is fixed term position with a targeted end date of 12/31/2032.

Salary Information

The National Geographic Society offers a competitive and holistic total rewards package. Our compensation structure and transparent pay philosophy are based on industry-specific market data for similar-sized nonprofit organizations.

The salary range for this position accounts for a wide range of factors including but not limited to organizational need; specific skill sets; experience and training; certifications; and more. At the National Geographic Society, individuals are typically hired at or near the starting point of the salary range for their role, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case.

The salary range for this position is $130,150.00 - $137,000.00.

In addition, the National Geographic Society offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits package that includes, but is not limited to, medical, dental, and vision insurance; engaging and comprehensive wellness program; 401(k) retirement savings plan with matching contributions after 6 months of employment; flexible paid time off benefits with up to 22 days of paid annual leave per calendar year (15 days for new hires in their first year, prorated based on the number of pay periods remaining in the year) and 10 days of sick leave; 12 paid holidays and a paid winter break between December 25 and 31 (May not apply to all roles that are required to work during high volume seasons or essential workers. Please check with the hiring manager for confirmation.); paid parental leave, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, fertility benefits; learning and development opportunities; Lifestyle Spending Account; pet adoption assistance and insurance; pre-tax transportation benefits with a generous employer subsidy; employer-paid life insurance and disability benefit; and a variety of National Geographic discounts and perks.

Job Designation

Remote - Our Remote designation includes staff who must work in another location in the U.S. or abroad, such as our regional leads for our Education and International teams or regional fundraisers in Advancement. Staff may also be designated as Remote by their supervisors (with approval by the Senior Team lead) because of their job duties, and are afforded this status when it is beneficial to NGS, their respective team, and the employee.

Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States. This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship.

We encourage you to apply even if your experience is not a 100% match with the position. We are looking for someone with relevant skills and experience, not a checklist that exactly matches the job description. We want to help you grow and in return, you help us grow into a stronger, more inclusive organization.