Senior Live Streaming Engineer (Backend) - PT - Worldwide

About the Role

Laivi is a live social streaming and creator economy app launching first in Mauritania with broader Africa/MENA ambitions. The MVP is built — backend, frontend, and virtual economy are functional — but the core live streaming layer has not yet been implemented. We're looking for a hands-on senior engineer to design and build a live streaming architecture that can scale to large concurrent audiences while keeping infrastructure costs low. This is a backend/infrastructure-focused role — no frontend work required.

What You'll Do

• Design and implement a live streaming solution (ingest, transcoding, delivery/CDN) optimized for cost efficiency at scale
• Evaluate and select streaming infrastructure/protocols (e.g. RTMP/WebRTC/HLS, self-hosted vs. managed) balancing cost against integration complexity
• Integrate the streaming layer into the existing backend and virtual economy systems
• Advise the founders on trade-offs between "easy but costly" and "harder to integrate but cost-efficient" solutions
• Set technical direction for this first build phase, with potential to help shape future technical hires

Must-Have Skills

• Proven experience building or scaling live video streaming platforms (not just consuming third-party streaming APIs)
• Strong grasp of cost-efficient streaming architecture at scale (bandwidth, transcoding, CDN cost optimization)
• Backend engineering proficiency
• Comfortable working independently with early-stage founders who are non-technical

Nice-to-Have

• Experience with large-concurrency, low-latency live streaming (social/live-streaming apps specifically, vs. VOD)
• Prior work in emerging-market or cost-constrained infrastructure environments

Process

Two interview rounds: (1) background/work ethic with founder, (2) technical assessment