Title:                     Senior Video DSP Engineer (876)

Department:          Gracenote Engineering

Reports To:           Director, Mobile Technologies

Status:                  Full-time, exempt

Location:              Emeryville, CA

We are seeking full-time research and development engineers to join Gracenote's Video Engineering team.  As part of the Video Engineering team, you have the opportunity to architect, implement, analyze, and improve cutting-edge algorithms identifying video content. Your responsibilities will involve creating and developing your own innovative ideas in focused efforts and as part of the productization team.

Gracenote has a variety of fingerprinting technologies used to identify video and audio signals, typically film and TV audio tracks. These technologies are used millions of times a day worldwide on everything from consumer electronics to mobile devices to PCs. To stay competitive, these technologies need to be continually improved. You will work closely with Gracenote's Media Technology Lab to analyze current performance and accuracy, enhance fingerprint generation, automated video classification, and assist in productizing these technologies to platforms such as iOS, Android, and Linux. Occasionally, you will need to evaluate alternative technologies from third parties that Gracenote is considering licensing. You may also be called upon to perform other analyses on video signals, or develop related algorithms and tools. Going forward, your role may expand to include audio fingerprinting and classification algorithms as well.

The successful candidate is self-motivated, thorough, and highly talented, with in-depth understanding of audio DSP technology and analytical and statistical techniques, excellent programming and other technical skills, an affinity for music, video, and multimedia technology in general, experienced with digital media files, strong communication skills, an ability to self-manage, and a strong desire to work in the exciting field of digital media technology.

RESPONSIBILITIES

The Video DSP Engineer role focuses on analysis and development of Gracenote's video content identification products, development of software components and tools, all geared toward enhancing Gracenote’s portfolio in the video content identification space. This includes staying up-to-date in the DSP field, creating internal white papers and integrating video fingerprinting and signal classification components into products. We require independent problem-solving skills, and the ability to formulate and implement novel ideas and solutions. We expect our Engineers to be strong, creative partners and innovators in a team of highly skilled audio and video professionals.

QUALIFICATIONS

Necessary Qualifications: 

• M.S. or better in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering with a strong signal processing and/or pattern recognition/statistical processing background. A BS in CS/EE is acceptable if the experience and skill levels are high.
• 3 or more years of experience in research and development of video (or audeo) technologies.
• Proficient knowledge of Windows, Mac or Linux platforms and tools (VC++, gcc, make).
• Familiarity with Matlab or comparable digital signal processing/analysis/modeling languages.
• Expert level knowledge of C, C++ and debugging techniques.
• Experience and skills in optimizing numerically intensive signal processing code.
• Experience working in research oriented environments and reading and interpreting scientific papers.
• Can generate, enhance, and promote innovative ideas for useful new projects and technologies.
• Strong communication and technical writing skills. Ideally having published at least one paper or contributed to at least one patent application. Language should not be a barrier to productivity.
• Experience in audio and/or video signal processing and analysis with a focus on implementations.
• Experience with signal classification and pattern recognition methods and technologies.

Desired:

• Audio processing, multimedia signal analysis and feature extraction/data mining a plus.
• Experience in developing embedded applications, and if not assembly language skills, at least awareness of what the compiler generates and how it can be expected to perform.
• iOS and/or Android experience developing low-level SDKs for these mobile OSs.
• Experience with fuzzy matching and their related indexing schemes.