The Fierce Video editorial team is proud to present its third annual Emerging Leaders Awards, recognizing the brightest young professionals rising up the ranks of the streaming TV industry. Throughout the month of May we’ll be featuring these profiles with each of our finalists. We will announce the winners during our StreamTV Show with a live awards ceremony in Denver on June 6 at 7:30 p.m. MT. Not yet registered for the StreamTV Show, running June 6-8? Be sure to register now!
Ridley Combs/Plex:
Ridley Combs is a staff software engineer at Plex. She joined Plex over eight years ago right out of high school as a contractor, making improvements to the format-conversion components of Plex's home media server application. During her time at the company, she's worked on a variety of projects across several products and teams, and developed a broad and extensive repertoire of technical expertise. In her current role, she is the lead engineer on Plex Media Server, where she works with a team on managing the technical aspects of the product, along with designing and implementing further infrastructure improvements.
What her colleagues are saying:
"Ridley's knowledge of all things video is only matched by her constant hunger to learn more and willingness to share it with those around her." - Hugo Sousa, engineering manager of personal media at Plex
"Ridley is an incredibly skilled engineer and tech leader, whose breadth of knowledge in all things video is second to none. Dedicated to improving the user experience, and always willing to help others, Plex is very lucky to have her!" - Alex Stevenson-Price, engineering manager of streaming clients and playback at Plex
Streaming Industry Q&A:
What streaming services do you subscribe to?
I've been a Plex Pass subscriber since well before joining the team! I also subscribe to Amazon Prime, YouTube Premium and Apple Music.
Describe your biggest career highlight so far.
It's pretty challenging to choose just one thing! One highlight that sticks out was when I was selected as technical lead for Plex's media server product. I was extremely proud to be selected for the role! I can also name several specific technical projects I've worked on that have made our products better for our customers. It's always very rewarding to see users tell us about how much they appreciate a new feature I helped develop.
What has been your biggest career learning experience?
Having jumped right into the workforce from such an early age, one of the largest hurdles I had to overcome was growing my interpersonal skills, which can be both challenging and critical in an all-remote company that focuses so heavily on text-based communication. I think one of the most important areas of growth during those first few years was learning to talk openly and honestly with colleagues about important issues, including ones they may have been involved in, without appearing rude. Ultimately, interpersonal skills can be more important to a tech worker than any single technical skill!
What's next for you in terms of new challenges in streaming TV?
As Plex continues to expand to more platforms and usage scenarios, our engineering team is focused on ensuring the integrity of our playback quality and performance. That means further work on use of new hardware peripherals, acceleration technologies, and networking protocols to leverage the full capabilities of our users' devices. It's often a challenge to adopt new powerful tools, but it's worth it when it lets us do more for our customers.