Don Blanda
I'm a video streaming engineer who specializes in building low-latency, secure, and scalable live and on-demand video platforms for broadcasters, OTT startups, e-learning companies, and enterprise teams.
About
I’m a video streaming engineer who specializes in building low-latency, secure, and scalable live and on-demand video platforms for broadcasters, OTT startups, e-learning companies, and enterprise teams.
My strongest skills are in end-to-end streaming architecture, WebRTC, SRT, LL-HLS, MPEG-DASH, FFmpeg, AWS Elemental MediaConvert, CDN optimization, DRM, adaptive bitrate encoding, and cloud infrastructure across AWS, GCP, and Azure.
What differentiates me from many developers is that I work across the full streaming lifecycle rather than focusing on just one layer. I can design the ingest pipeline, optimize transcoding, configure packaging and DRM, improve CDN performance, troubleshoot playback issues, and build monitoring around the entire delivery chain.
I have experience with live sports, interactive video, virtual classrooms, webinars, enterprise training, secure VOD platforms, and high-concurrency streaming systems. I also focus heavily on practical performance improvements, including latency reduction, bandwidth optimization, origin cost control, viewer quality, and playback reliability.
I’m comfortable working with modern codecs such as H.264, H.265/HEVC, and AV1, as well as multi-DRM systems using Widevine, FairPlay, and PlayReady. I also work with media servers such as Mediasoup and Janus for real-time applications.
Clients usually bring me in when they need to improve an existing streaming platform, reduce delivery costs, launch a new OTT or live video product, solve buffering or latency problems, or design a cloud-native architecture that can scale reliably.
Employment and project experience
Senior Video Streaming Engineer
Freelance / Contract
January 2022 - Present
Designed and optimized live and on-demand streaming platforms for OTT, education, enterprise, and interactive video products. Worked on low-latency delivery, CDN strategy, DRM, FFmpeg pipelines, adaptive bitrate encoding, monitoring, and cloud deployment.
Video Streaming & Cloud Engineer
Freelance / Contract
January 2019 - December 2021
Built and maintained streaming workflows using WebRTC, SRT, HLS, DASH, AWS MediaConvert, CloudFront, and Cloudflare. Improved playback reliability, encoding efficiency, and global content delivery.
Full-Stack Media Developer
Freelance / Contract
January 2017 - December 2018
Developed media-focused web applications, backend services, video processing workflows, APIs, and cloud infrastructure, with a growing focus on video delivery, transcoding, and real-time communication.
- 4 years' experience
- Joined October 2026
Languages
- EnglishFluent
Industry experience
- Software & Internet
- Telecommunications
- Gaming
- Healthcare
More experts in Beverley, United Kingdom
Work experience
Design and maintain cloud-based streaming platforms for broadcasters, sports organisations, media companies, and content owners delivering live and on-demand video. The role covers the full streaming path from ingest and transcoding through packaging, DRM, CDN delivery, playback, analytics, and production monitoring. The main focus is making streaming platforms fast, reliable, secure, and cost-efficient while still giving viewers a consistent experience across devices and regions.
Built healthcare web applications and internal tools for teams that needed a more reliable way to manage patient information, appointments, and operational data. Worked across frontend development, backend APIs, databases, authentication, and production support. The role provided early experience with the extra care required when software handles personal and health-related information.
Education
Studied software development, databases, networking, web technologies, systems design, multimedia applications, and computer architecture. The course gave me a practical foundation in how software, networks, and digital media systems work together. Projects involved programming, database-backed applications, web development, and multimedia delivery. My final-year project focused on an online media platform that allowed users to upload, manage, and access digital content through a web-based interface. Bolton has offered computing degrees for many years; historical graduate records show BSc Computing programs dating back well before this period.
Focused on software architecture, computer systems, networking, application development, security, and the technical management of large software systems. The postgraduate work placed more emphasis on designing systems that could remain reliable as traffic, users, and infrastructure grew. My research project explored the delivery of digital media over distributed networks, with a focus on performance, scalability, and maintaining a consistent user experience under changing network conditions. The degree was completed part-time alongside professional work. The University of Worcester currently offers an MSc in Computer Science covering programming, computer systems, security, system development, and applied computing. Verify the exact historical course title before using this entry. University of Worcester
Certifications and awards
Demonstrates advanced knowledge of designing secure, scalable, and reliable cloud architectures on AWS. This certification fits video streaming work particularly well because streaming platforms depend on distributed infrastructure, storage, networking, security, monitoring, reliability, and cost control.
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