# Alex Converse

> Video Software Engineer

Location: Oakland, California, United States
Profile: https://flows.cv/alexconverse

Software and Video Problem Solver

I'm a software engineer with deep video experience from codecs, to containers, to protocols, to pixel processing. I pivoted from signal processing to more general software development to be able to attack problems in a video system all over the stack. 

I've implemented an AAC decoder from just the specification. I've profiled and optimized H.264 and VP9 codecs. I've adapted existing video solutions to new applications and use cases. I've been the point person for extending transcoding software to support new assets and increasing output compatibility to new playback scenarios. I'm looking to apply my video expertise to improve user experience, to make sure each pixel of every video gets to the user's eye as cheaply, quickly, and with as much quality as possible. 

Specialties: Video ingestion, Video transcoding, distributed transcoding, format compatibility, MPEG technology, video compression, audio compression, RTMP, WebRTC, QUIC, AV1, VP9, H.264, AAC, Opus, ISO BMFF, MP4, MKV, WebM, DASH, HLS, SRT, RTMFP, Golang.

Interested in: Rust, QUIC, MoQ (Media Over QUIC), WebTransport

## Work Experience
### Staff Software Engineer @ Discord
Jan 2022 – Present | San Francisco Bay Area
I am working on video and audio capture, processing, encoding, and decoding on desktop and mobile. I am designing, developing, measuring, and shipping native integrations for high performance media on Electron JS and React Native. 

Some projects I've worked on:
- Adding new codecs
- Rewriting audio device handling
- Asyncifying long blocking device operations
- Measuring app latency and video quality
- Fixing key capture compatibility issues in heterogeneous environments

https://discord.com/blog/from-blocky-to-brilliant-improving-video-quality-on-discord-go-live-on-amd-gpus

### Senior Software Engineer @ Twitch
Jan 2017 – Jan 2022 | San Francisco Bay Area
I was a Video Ingest/Origin team member working on the ingest edge, RTMP termination and session management, transcoding, and HTTP origin for both Twitch.tv and Amazon IVS. I worked on both bare metal data plane software and cloud native control plane software.

Some projects I was been a part of: 

Twitch Guest Star: https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/30/twitch-guest-star/
IVS Web Broadcast (WebRTC): https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/media/broadcast-from-a-browser-with-the-amazon-ivs-web-broadcast-sdk/
Amazon IVS: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/07/introducing-amazon-ivs/
Disconnect Protect: https://help.twitch.tv/s/article/Disconnect-Protection
VP9: https://blog.twitch.tv/how-does-vp9-deliver-value-for-twitchs-esports-live-streaming-35db26f6322f

### Senior Software Engineer @ Google
Jan 2013 – Jan 2017 | Mountain View, CA
(Software Engineer Nov 2013 - Nov 2014)
Chrome Media -- WebM VP9/VP10, AOMedia AV1

Projects:
Photoshop Streaming for ChromeOS
VP9 Chromium remote desktop integrations
VP9 Realtime optimizations
VP9 Screen content optimizations
VP9 Small frame size optimizations

AV1 rANS (Asymmetric Numeral Systems) based entropy coder proposal
AV1 Intra Block Copy proposal

### Senior Software Engineer @ Stealth Startup - Black Pearl
Jan 2013 – Jan 2013 | Cupertino, CA

### Software Engineer @ Google
Jan 2011 – Jan 2013 | Mountain View, CA
Cloud transcoding
Live transcoding
Premium content ingestion
User generated content ingestion
AAC encoding
Distributed encoding

### Software Applications Engineer @ Zoran
Jan 2010 – Jan 2011 | Sunnyvale, CA
Member of the video flow team for the COACH 12 and 13 SoCs for digital cameras.

### Developer @ FFmpeg
Jan 2008 – Jan 2010
* AAC decoder
 - Ran the MPEG conformance suite over the AAC codebase and fixed a variety of small bugs 
 - Added Main profile support to the AAC decoder including the backward predictor 
 - Added support for ADTS muxed AAC.
 - Implemented numerous speed optimizations
* Finishing the SBR (HE-AAC) v1 decoder
 - took unfinished SBR code from another developer
 - added missing subroutines
 - rewrote the filter bank 
 - added integration into the AAC decoder,
 - ran numerous conformance tests and fixed associated bugs
 - made numerous changes based on a lengthy peer review process
* AAC-LC Encoder
 - Made a variety of improvements to the gsoc encoder
* PS (HE-AAC v2) decoding
 - Wrote a Parametric Stereo decoder based solely on the specification
 - Integrated it with the existing AAC and SBR infrastructure
 - Verified it over the MPEG test vectors
 - Verified it over the Coding Technologies signalling test vectors
* A variety of small enhancements and fixes for mp4, theora, indeo, and probing
* An all real FFT
* SSE audio routines

### DSP Engineer @ Improv Systems
Jan 2005 – Jan 2008 | Rochester, New York, United States
Audio and video codec implementation, maintenance, and optimization


## Education
### Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Electrical Engineering
Case Western Reserve University


## Contact & Social
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/alexconverse
- GitHub: https://github.com/aconverse

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Source: https://flows.cv/alexconverse
JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/alexconverse/resume.json
Last updated: 2026-04-12