Sam Gigliotti

About Sam Gigliotti

30+ years of software development - 17.5 at Amazon- Promoted to L6 (2007), L7 (2009), and L82•••••00+ interviews, bar raiser- 50+ patents- My depth areas are audio/video, text messaging, and real-time communication systems. I can do full stack from device/embedded to cloud- I know enough ML to be semi-dangerous- I have a pretty decent success rate at kicking off interesting ideas and turning them into impactful systems- Other senior engineer stuff: technical strategy, design reviews, mentoring, promotion assessments- Main languages: TypeScript/JavaScript, Java, CMajor Amazon projects- Alexa Communications (calling, drop in, announcements)- In-call Augmented Reality audio/video effects- Amazon Live text messaging- Mayday (tablet customer support with real-time video and screen sharing)- FireTV device and catalog- Kindle for the browser- Original Amazon Video team (Amazon Unbox)Alexa Communications (2016-present)Customers use these features to call between Alexa devices and/or the Alexa mobile app. They can also make announcements that play on Alexa devices.I designed and built the infrastructure for cloud processing of real-time media. This is a system based on Gstreamer (an open source media framework) along with a JavaScript VM so pipelines can be constructed and managed in TypeScript instead of C. This is used to add Machine Learning features such as augmented reality effects (e.g. overlay a Spider Man mask on your face), audio transcription, audio noise suppression, video quality improvements, and others.The core of this system also underlies part of AWS Kinesis Video Streams.Relevant technologies: WebRTC, Gstreamer, SRTP, DTLS, ICE, SDP, UDP, audio/video codecs, TypeScript infrastructure (ESLint, Prettier, etc.),production quality C coding.FireTV / Amazon Live (20••••16)For FireTV, I designed the system to present a shared video catalog to customers across content providers. This enabled customers to look at a particular title and see where they already have rights to it, and where they can purchase/rent it. This required loose matching of titles across providers (series, seasons, and episodes of TV can be described differently by Netflix vs. Amazon, for example). I also worked on performance improvements on the device side for tile display, text rendering, and scrolling large lists.Relevant technologies: Java, distributed systems, Android.[resume with more details]https://docs.google.com/document/d/1j70nEnEQY-wklE33TGHPtphj6SkpPSbJ_eAMEXaCVIg/edit?usp=sharing

Experience

1. Distinguished Architect

   Twilio

   Oct 2025 — Present

Education

• Rochester Institute of Technology

  BS-CompEng, Computer Engineering

  1986 — 1991

Skills

• Mobile Devices
• Java
• Javascript
• Architectures
• Software Development
• Scrum
• Video
• Web Applications
• System Architecture
• Interviewing
• Agile Methodologies
• Shell Scripting
• Sql
• Architecture
• Flex
• Databases
• Web Services
• Distributed Systems
• Html5
• C#
• .net
• Mobile Applications
• Programming
• Scalability
• Software Design
• Web Development
• Mentoring
• Android