Senior Software Engineer · Products, Automation & AI
Available immediately · Contract or permanent
Fifteen years shipping complete products, most of them on my own: web platforms, iOS and Android apps, desktop tools, television apps and the hardware sitting in the room. My career has been in video, which is a demanding place to learn to build things that cannot fail quietly. I am now looking for work that uses the whole of that, including the automation, testing and physical computing side.
Agents are how I build now, and it is the reason one engineer can ship as much as this. At Plex the whole workflow ran on them: a ticket went into Claude Code, an agent planned and wrote the change, AI reviewed the pull request, an engineer signed it off, every day, in production.
Agents are fast but not careful, so I treat the architecture as my job. I set the contracts between layers and platforms, write the way a team works into Claude skills and MCP tooling so every engineer and every agent works the same way, and put the tests first so there is a clear definition of done.
I also built my own AI coding terminal, a desktop app in Rust and TypeScript, and use it to ship iOS, Android, desktop and web products on a single API.
Languages & Frameworks: TypeScript, JavaScript, React, React Native, Node.js, Swift, Kotlin, Angular, ElectronJS, LightningJS
Tooling: Git / GitHub / GitLab, Jira, Linear, Sentry, Conviva, Jest, Vitest, Xcode, Android Studio, Agile / Scrum, Claude Code, MCP, Codex
AWS Infrastructure: EC2, Auto Scaling Groups, ELB / ALB, RDS, VPC, Bastion Hosts, S3, CloudFront, Lambda, IAM, Route 53
React Native: New Architecture, TurboModules, Nitro Modules, Reanimated, Gesture Handler, Zustand, React Query, Metro, Maestro E2E, Storybook, pnpm / Turborepo monorepo
Mobile, TV & STB Platforms: iOS, tvOS, Android, Android TV, Fire TV, Samsung Tizen, LG WebOS, Hisense Vidaa, Custom STBs, DVB / OIPF
Video Players: Shaka Player, AVPlayer, ExoPlayer / androidx-media, KSPlayer (FFmpeg), DashJS, HLS.js, Custom MSE, CastLabs, Bitmovin, VideoJS
Also: Widevine, PlayReady, FairPlay, BuyDRM, EZDRM, SPEKE API, CENC / CBCS, CMAF, MediaLive, MediaPackage, MediaConvert, MediaTailor, MediaConnect, CloudFormation, SSAI, CSAI, AWS MediaTailor, Manifest stitching, SCTE-35, VMAP, VAST, Google IMA SDK, FAST channels, Pause ads, Live catch-up
Senior Software Engineer · Player Team (most recent)
Player team engineer on Plex's cross platform React Native client, shipping one TypeScript codebase to iOS, tvOS, Android, Android TV, Fire TV, Samsung Tizen and web, with native Swift and Kotlin underneath. My role was eliminated in October 2026 when Plex cut 24 positions and restructured its development teams, a company wide decision rather than anything to do with the work.
Senior Software Engineer · Vodafone
Built Vodafone's next generation set top box from the ground up. Also worked across Yettel, Entel, and OneTV, delivering live, catchup, start over, channel switching, on demand, and recordings. Worked closely with Nagra on DRM and content protection integration. Helped the team hit critical launch deadlines, working remotely from the UK.
Senior Software Engineer
Worked across PeacockTV, SkyShowTime, and NowTV. Focused on video start times, rebuffering reduction, and cross platform delivery at scale.
Founder & CEO · AWS Certified
Founded and scaled a cloud media streaming platform on AWS, distributing millions of video players monthly via API. Built the full product stack end to end, from encoding tools and DRM protected playback to the underlying Amazon infrastructure: large RDS databases, EC2 Auto Scaling groups behind Elastic Load Balancers, bastion hosts inside hardened VPCs for secure access, and the full AWS Media stack. AWS Certified, with hands on experience running production services at scale.
Built and shipped on my own time. The full set is at samueleast.co.uk.
A real arcade claw machine you can play over the internet. The gantry came from Alibaba, the cabinet from an arcade dealer, and the controls are driven remotely with a camera inside for the view.
iPhone lighting control for high end yachts. The app speaks Art-Net over UDP to the colour wheel controller on board, driving every light on the boat over its own network with no cloud and no internet in the loop.
Built with: Appcelerator Titanium, JavaScript, iOS, UDP sockets, Art-Net
AI coding terminal. The desktop app runs your coding agents, and the phone app picks up the same sessions so you can keep working away from your desk.
Built with: Tauri (Rust), React, xterm.js, whisper.cpp, SwiftUI, Kotlin
Marketplace for creators selling AI generated music. Listeners preview for free and buy the full quality master to keep.
Built with: Next.js, Hono, Electron, SwiftUI, Kotlin, Firebase, Stripe, R2
Open banking app for UK limited company directors who find accounts and tax confusing. It reads your business bank account and Penny, the AI assistant, explains in plain English what you owe, when, and how much to put aside.
Built with: Next.js, SwiftUI, TrueLayer, Claude, HMRC APIs