www.djbenjones.co.uk
BenJones
Broadcast Engineer · Streaming Tech · DJ
Broadcast engineer by day, streaming infrastructure provider around the clock, and fifteen years of house music under my belt — built at the decks across the North West.
Broadcast Engineer · Streaming Tech · DJ
Broadcast engineer by day, streaming infrastructure provider around the clock, and fifteen years of house music under my belt — built at the decks across the North West.
I'm a broadcast engineer at Red Bee Media in MediaCityUK, Salford — one of the UK's leading broadcast technology and media services companies. Working 12-hour shifts in the MCR, I help keep some of Britain's biggest TV channels on air around the clock.
From signal path troubleshooting and automation systems to IP-based infrastructure and playout, I work across the full broadcast chain. The industry is deep in transition — from traditional SDI to IP, from tape to file-based workflows — and I'm right in the thick of it.
My toolkit spans Grass Valley Morpheus, Axon, DataMiner, and SolarWinds, alongside a broader Linux and networking background that bridges the gap between traditional broadcast and modern IT-centric infrastructure.
Hippynet is the broadcast technology company I founded and run alongside my engineering career. We provide end-to-end streaming infrastructure, SaaS platforms, and managed hosting to radio stations across the UK and Europe.
Our stack is built for resilience: Icecast and Shoutcast streaming, AutoPod podcast automation, Airwave managed radio hosting, and HLS delivery via Bunny CDN. Everything containerised, monitored, and backed by datacentres in Liverpool, London, and Nuremberg.
We handle the infrastructure so our clients can focus on making great radio — from small community stations to established commercial broadcasters.
Managed Icecast and Shoutcast hosting with HLS delivery, failover, and real-time monitoring — built for stations that can't afford downtime.
Podcast automation and managed radio hosting SaaS products for stations and content creators who want the technology handled for them.
Docker-based microservices, Traefik reverse proxies, Let's Encrypt SSL, and PowerDNS clusters — the stack behind modern radio broadcasting.
Before I was patching SDI signals or managing streaming infrastructure, I was a professional DJ — playing House music across bars and clubs throughout the North West of England for fifteen years.
Technics SL-1210s and Pioneer CDJs were my tools of choice. From small intimate venues to larger club nights, I played the kind of deep, soulful, and driving House that defined a scene — and developed an ear for audio quality that still informs how I approach broadcast sound to this day.
That background wasn't just musical. Learning to read a crowd, manage live audio, and keep a dance floor moving under pressure is surprisingly good training for managing a live broadcast chain. The fundamentals — timing, signal flow, and never letting the output drop — are the same.
These days the decks have largely given way to server racks and playout systems, but the love for the music hasn't gone anywhere.
