01
Backend
Product APIs and workers
Users, auth, profiles, feeds, catalog, performances, purchases, notifications, uploads, transcoding, and publishing paths.
2013 to 2015 · San Francisco, California
StarMaker Interactive
Backend Engineer
I built the backend, web app, and admin tooling behind a worldwide consumer music platform where artists and singing enthusiasts created real-time audio performances, shared transcoded videos, and moved content through partner publishing, moderation, and rights operations.
Backend + web + admin
application surface area
Backend, web app, and admin tools in one product system.
The professional story is the surface area. StarMaker needed the consumer backend, the web product layer, and the internal tools to all agree about the same performances, users, videos, rights, payments, and publishing states.
02
Web app
Browser product surfaces
Content, creator, video, sharing, and publishing workflows connected back to the same backend domain model.
03
Admin
Internal operating tools
Moderation, catalog operations, user support, contest management, partner review, and operational debugging.
04
Rights
Revenue and payout logic
Ownership context, YouTube publishing, royalty-rate differences, revenue tracking, and payment calculations.
Backend
APIs + workers
Product
Web app
Operations
Admin tools
Work breakdown
A full application build, split across three operating surfaces.
The platform story is wider than media processing. I was building the backend, the web app, and the internal admin layer that let StarMaker create, distribute, moderate, support, and account for real consumer media.
01 Backend platform
The application backend, from identity to media processing.
I worked on a broad product API and worker system for a consumer music network: account state, social surfaces, song catalogs, media ingestion, video processing, contests, monetization, notifications, and partner distribution all had to behave as one product.
01.01
Identity, auth, users, and profiles
User accounts, authentication flows, profile data, artist and fan identity, social presence, settings, and the basic account state that every mobile and web surface depended on.
01.02
Feeds, catalogs, discovery, and recommendations
Backend surfaces for the music catalog, performance feeds, profile pages, recommendations, and discovery loops that helped people find songs, creators, contests, and recordings.
01.03
Real-time singing and performance workflows
Product APIs around the core singing experience: recording metadata, performance state, collaboration-style flows, contest participation, leaderboard updates, and shareable performance objects.
01.04
Media upload and transcoding workers
Upload link creation, audio and video handling, worker services, high-quality transcoding modules, and the async pipeline that turned mobile recordings into usable media assets.
01.05
Notifications, push, and activity loops
Event-driven product surfaces around follows, contests, performance activity, updates, and push notifications so the consumer app could feel alive rather than static.
01.06
Purchases, subscriptions, and entitlements
Backend integrations for purchases and subscriptions, entitlement checks, account state changes, and the product logic connecting monetization to what users could access or do.
01.07
YouTube and partner publishing paths
Publishing workflows for content that moved beyond StarMaker, including music-video preparation, partner metadata, YouTube upload and publish flows, and distribution states.
01.08
Rights and accounting logic
In-house logic for content ownership context, royalty-rate differences, revenue tracking, and payout calculations when partner arrangements made StarMaker responsible for the operational truth.
02 Web app
Browser-based product and publishing surfaces around the mobile experience.
StarMaker was mobile-first, but I still helped build the web surfaces: places where content, artists, videos, partner flows, and internal publishing states could be viewed, managed, and connected back to the backend.
02.01
Content and creator presentation
Web surfaces for presenting songs, artists, performances, profiles, and shareable media in a way that made the platform legible outside the native app.
02.02
Video sharing and landing flows
Pages and flows around shared recordings and music videos so consumer-created media could travel across the web and still point back to StarMaker.
02.03
Publishing workflow interface
Web-facing workflow states for preparing, reviewing, and tracking content as it moved from internal systems toward partner channels and YouTube publishing.
02.04
API-backed product screens
Frontend work tied directly to backend services: catalog data, performance records, account state, media status, recommendations, and operational signals surfaced through the web app.
03 Admin tools
The internal tooling that made the platform operable.
I built inside the internal tooling layer that made the consumer product work at scale: tools to inspect, moderate, correct, publish, and account for what was happening across media, rights, and support work.
03.01
Moderation queues and review states
Internal tools for reviewing performances, videos, user activity, and publishing candidates so the team could decide what was allowed before content reached wider distribution.
03.02
Content catalog operations
Admin workflows for songs, artist metadata, performance records, media assets, publishing states, contest content, and the catalog data behind the consumer experience.
03.03
User and account support
Operational views for finding users, understanding account state, debugging issues, and supporting the business without engineering intervention for every investigation.
03.04
Contest and leaderboard management
Tools around contest setup, participation, ranking, content eligibility, and operational fixes for social mechanics that needed both product behavior and human oversight.
03.05
Partner publishing review
Admin surfaces for tracking which performances or music videos were ready for partner distribution, which needed review, and what metadata or rights context applied.
03.06
Rights attribution and rate context
Tools and data flows to associate content with the right intellectual property owners, usage context, contractual rate logic, and reporting paths for later payment calculations.
03.07
Revenue and payout reconciliation
Accounting-style internal systems for tracking money movement, attributing revenue to the right content and rights holders, and supporting payments under different rate rules.
Evidence notes
I keep these provenance cues here so the page stays specific without pretending every private archive is public proof.
- StarMaker public site
- Local StarMaker server docs
- Local git history
- Personal partnership and rights context