About Coupang Play
Coupang Play is an OTT video streaming service. We offer a wide range of content, including Original Series, TV Shows, Movies, and Sports.
We are in the business of delivering exceptional storytelling. We produce award-winning scripted and unscripted Original Series, such as “Boyhood”, “Anna”, and “SNL Korea”. We believe Sports can also be elevated by creative storytelling. Play is now an authoritative destination for Sports, broadcasting K-League, La Liga, Bundesliga, F1, NFL, and other leading leagues and tournaments. We also offer some of the latest movies that were just released in local theaters, bringing more exceptional storytelling to our customers.
To ensure that we deliver all content seamlessly, we invest in Engineering, Product, and Design. Coupang Play is available on all mobile devices, tablets, PC, Smart TV, Apple TV, and Android TV. Our teams keep optimizing how customers discover and stream both VOD and Live content. That includes investments in frontend, backend, and infrastructural developments. We also embrace Machine Learning to refine our CX.
We are still very early in our growth stage. If you enjoy solving complex problems using industry-leading technology or unconventional business approaches, please join us. We are building a world-class team of problem-solvers, all dedicated to delivering exceptional storytelling to our customers.
Role Overview
We are seeking a Senior Back-end Engineer with a "Founder's Mentality" to own the infrastructure powering our video platform. You don't just work on Jira tickets; you architect high-scale distributed systems on AWS, optimize cloud economics, and drive the end-to-end business impact of your work. You balance the agility of a startup with the rigor of Domain-Driven Design, ensuring we move fast without breaking production.
What You Will Do
- You will design and implement the core microservices and event-driven workflows that decouple video ingest from delivery, ensuring the platform remains fault-tolerant during massive traffic spikes
- You will take full ownership of the production environment by defining infrastructure as code, automating deployment pipelines, and implementing intelligent auto-scaling strategies to manage compute resources efficiently
- You will develop the backend orchestration logic for our media supply chain, automating complex tasks such as transcoding scheduling, manifest manipulation, and DRM license management
- You will proactively manage cloud economics by identifying inefficiencies and re-architecting workloads—such as shifting batch processing to Spot Instances—to maximize performance per dollar
- You will act as a technical standard-bearer for the team, enforcing Domain-Driven Design principles and comprehensive testing strategies to ensure we ship features rapidly without accumulating technical debt
- You will instrument pervasive observability across the stack, creating the feedback loops necessary to detect video performance bottlenecks and improve the end-user experience in real-time
Basic Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience building distributed systems using Go (Golang), Java, or Node.js. Strong proficiency in gRPC and building high-throughput RESTful APIs.
- Deep experience architecting and deploying high-scale distributed systems on AWS. Deep expertise with compute (ECS/EKS, Lambda), storage (S3), data (DynamoDB, RDS) services, and comfortable writing Terraform or CloudFormation.
- Strong experience designing Event-Driven Architectures using managed services (Kafka, Kinesis, or SQS) to decouple services and ensure scalability.
- Demonstrated ability to optimize cloud infrastructure costs (e.g., using Spot Instances for non-critical VOD transcoding).
- Demonstrated strong foundation in software design (Domain-Driven Design), clean code principles, and a Test-Driven mindset. You balance "moving fast" with "building things that don't break."
Preferred Qualifications
- Strong experience with Streaming Protocols (HLS, DASH, CMAF) and understanding how to manipulate manifest tags programmatically
- Experience building video workflows using AWS Media Services (MediaLive, MediaConvert) or orchestrating FFmpeg on EC2 Spot Instances/Fargate
- Experience with DRM (Widevine, FairPlay, PlayReady)
- Experience building systems using Prometheus, Grafana, or ELK Stack specifically to track video metrics (e.g., Transcoding Speed vs. Realtime, Ingest Bitrate, Error Segment Ratios)
- Experience implementing Observability at scale: Instrumentation using Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, or Datadog to track video-specific operational metrics.
Recruitment Process and Others
Recruitment Process
- Application Review - 1st Interview - 2nd Tech Interview - Leadership interview – Offer
- The exact nature of the recruitment process may vary according to the specific job and may be changed due to scheduling or other circumstances.
- Interview schedules and the results will be informed to the applicant via the e-mail address submitted at the application stage.
Details to Consider
- This job posting may be closed prior to the stated end date for application if all openings are filled.
- Coupang has the right to rescind an offer of employment if a candidate is found to have submitted false information as part of the application process.
- Those eligible for employment protection (recipients of veteran’s benefits, the disabled, etc.) may receive preferential treatment for employment in accordance with applicable laws.
- Job titles and responsibilities may be subject to change depending on the candidate’s overall experience, etc. This will be communicated to the candidate at the appropriate time before the offer.
- Hiring may be restricted in case the legal qualifications required for hiring and work performance is not met.
Privacy Notice
- Your personal information will be collected and managed by Coupang as stated in the Application Privacy Notice located below.
https://privacy.coupang.com/en/land/jobs/
Coupang Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Coupang and has not been reviewed or approved by Coupang.
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Healthcare Strength — Benefits are described as robust, including medical, dental, vision, disability, life, mental health, and transgender healthcare. Some locations also offer on-site or virtual health screenings that enhance preventive care access.
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Retirement Support — Financial programs include a 401(k) with company matching and an employee stock purchase plan alongside performance bonuses. Feedback suggests these elements provide a structured foundation for long-term savings and wealth building.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Paid time off is described as generous with accrual increasing with tenure, complemented by company-paid holidays and parental leave. Flexible work arrangements in some roles further support time away when needed.
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What We Do
We exist to wow our customers. We know we’re doing the right thing when we hear our customers say, “How did we ever live without Coupang?” Born out of an obsession to make shopping, eating, and living easier than ever, we’re collectively disrupting the multi-billion-dollar e-commerce industry from the ground up. We are one of the fastest-growing e-commerce companies that established an unparalleled reputation for being a dominant and reliable force in South Korean commerce. We are proud to have the best of both worlds — a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been since our inception. We are all entrepreneurial, surrounded by opportunities to drive new initiatives and innovations. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact. At Coupang, you will see yourself, your colleagues, your team, and the company grow every day. Our mission to build the future of commerce is real. We push the boundaries of what’s possible to solve problems and break traditional tradeoffs. Join Coupang now to create an epic experience in this always-on, high-tech, and hyper-connected world.
Why Work With Us
We are proud to have the best of both worlds — a startup culture with the resources of a large global public company. This fuels us to continue our growth and launch new services at the speed we have been since our inception. At our core, we are bold and ambitious people that like to get our hands dirty and make a hands-on impact.
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