Cloud Game Streaming - Systems Engineer

United Kingdom, London · GBR-London-15GMS · Hybrid · Posted Oct 2, 2026

At a glance

We are looking for an engineer to join the GDFT department, working on the design and optimisation of PlayStation’s real-time game streaming technologies.
You will contribute to the development of low-latency video streaming systems across current and future PlayStation platforms, working on performance-critical areas spanning frame capture, media pipelines, codec configuration, system services and streaming transport.
Our work sits at the intersection of product engineering and R&D, encouraging engineers to investigate new approaches to reducing end-to-end latency, improving visual quality and reducing bitrate.

Develop, optimise and maintain low-level C and C++ components within PlayStation’s game streaming stack.
Investigate opportunities to reduce end-to-end streaming latency across frame capture, buffering, encoding, transport, decoding and presentation.
Optimise the use and configuration of hardware video encoders, applying knowledge of codec behaviour and low-latency encoding techniques.
Analyse existing media pipelines to identify unnecessary buffering, memory copies, synchronisation delays and other sources of latency.
Use software and hardware instrumentation to measure system behaviour, validate hypotheses and quantify the impact of performance changes.
Investigate and debug issues across user-space applications, system services and daemon-level components.
Prototype and evaluate new approaches to improving streaming quality, latency and bandwidth efficiency.
Work with engineers and researchers across the wider organisation on areas such as codec development, rate control, Forward Error Correction and emerging media technologies.
Contribute technical findings and recommendations to design discussions, working with senior engineers to determine appropriate production solutions.
Collaborate across teams to integrate and validate streaming technologies within PlayStation platform software.

Strong proficiency in C and C++.
Experience developing native, performance-sensitive software rather than primarily web or managed application stacks.
Experience working with real-time video, media pipelines, codecs or embedded multimedia systems.
Practical understanding of video compression and media formats, including concepts such as chroma subsampling, bit depth and colour representation, with familiarity of codecs such as AVC, HEVC or AV1.
Understanding of concepts relevant to low-latency video encoding, which may include GOP structures, reference frames, rate control, VBV, quantisation parameters, slices, tiles or hardware codec APIs.
Strong debugging, profiling and performance-analysis skills.
An ability to investigate complex technical problems, identify likely causes and use evidence and instrumentation to support conclusions.
Comfortable working in unfamiliar parts of a large system and developing an understanding of how multiple components interact.
An experimental mindset, with an interest in prototyping, measuring and evaluating alternative technical approaches.
Ability to contribute to technical discussions and work with senior engineers when deciding how findings should be taken forward.

Familiarity with techniques for evaluating video codec performance, including bitrate/quality/latency trade-offs and objective or perceptual video quality metrics (such as PSNR and VMAF).
Familiarity with compressed video bitstreams and codec signalling, such as NAL units/OBUs, parameter sets, profiles/levels and supplemental enhancement information.
Experience developing native video players, media frameworks or codec pipelines on TVs, set-top boxes, consoles, mobile devices or other embedded platforms.
Experience configuring or integrating hardware video encoders or decoders.
Deeper knowledge of H.264, HEVC, AV1 or other current and emerging video codecs, beyond high-level API configuration.
Experience optimising real-time video for low latency, visual quality or bitrate efficiency.
Familiarity with frame capture, graphics presentation pipelines, framebuffers or GPU/CPU synchronisation.
Experience identifying and reducing memory copies, queueing delays, memory-bandwidth limitations or other system-level performance bottlenecks.

Attend periodic in-person workshops or team events, with travel possible a few times per year.
Flexible and relaxed working environment, with strong support for hybrid work.