Product Manager, Streaming Platform: Player & Advertising Technology

PLAYER & ADVERTISING TECHNOLOGY

Lead the Player Squad: set priorities, run planning and refinement, and act as the single product owner for the player engineers drawn from the Apple, Android, Roku, smart TV and web engineering teams

Own the vision, strategy and roadmap for the video player and player SDKs on every platform the Red Bull Streaming Platform ships on: Apple, Android, Roku, smart TV, game console and web. Define what the player and the SDKs become over the next three years and sequence the work to get there

Own the playback experience end to end: live, linear and video on demand over HLS and DASH; DRM; adaptive bitrate; multi-audio and subtitle tracks; player controls; and interactive features such as live timeline events, multi-view and in-player overlays

Own advertising within the player: define and prioritize the ad insertion roadmap across client-side, server-side and server-guided ad insertion, and own how ads render, track and are measured in the player, from SCTE-35 markers and HLS date range tags through VAST and VMAP responses

Collaborate with the encoding team on how ads are signaled and inserted across our streams, and on the AWS Elemental Media Services stack (MediaLive, MediaPackage, MediaTailor), so that stream conditioning, ad markers and manifests support the player roadmap

Collaborate with the Google Ad Manager and Ad Operations teams on ad decisioning, configuration and reporting, so that what the player requests and renders matches what the business sells and measures

Take in and triage feature requests from the Red Bull TV, ServusTV On and Rally.TV tenants and from the client product teams; consolidate them into one prioritized player backlog and communicate decisions and trade-offs back to the requesters

Set and hold a high bar for quality and user experience: define the player test strategy with QA, including device coverage, ad scenario matrices and pre-event live readiness, and hold releases to it

Define success metrics before launch and review them after: quality of experience (start-up time, rebuffering, errors, bitrate), ad fill and completion, and interactive feature adoption, using Datadog, Datazoom and ad server reporting, and turn findings into roadmap items

Own the product side of the shared video player SDKs used by Red Bull native apps and web properties: integration guidelines, versioning and release cadence, and support for the teams that integrate them

Manage player and advertising vendor relationships, including SDK licensing, ad server and measurement partners; lead build versus buy decisions and standard vendor contracts with Legal and Procurement

Lead player incident triage during live events and for playback or advertising escalations; maintain the player documentation, runbooks and ad integration guidelines the tenants and client teams rely on

Ensure player certification, accessibility (captions, audio description, European Accessibility Act), privacy and platform store requirements are met on every device family

PRODUCT LIFECYCLE AND COLLABORATION

Own the product vision, strategy, and roadmap for the video player and player SDKs across every platform on the Red Bull Streaming Platform

Champion seamless collaboration between design, the Player Squad and the client engineering teams: act as the driving force that keeps player work moving by removing obstacles and ensuring alignment to deliver the right player efficiently and at high quality

Build strong cross-team, cross-department and cross-cultural relationships with technical and business stakeholders, including encoding, Ad Operations, tenant and client product teams; use verbal and written communication to influence and align them on the player roadmap and release plan.

Prioritize user stories, defects, and enhancements from the tenants and client teams to ensure that the Player Squad efficiently delivers the player vision (i.e., full-lifecycle product delivery)

PRODUCT STRATEGY

Develop a comprehensive and current understanding of streaming delivery and player technology: HLS and DASH, low latency, DRM, codecs, and the player frameworks on each platform (AVPlayer, ExoPlayer and Media3, Roku, Shaka and HTML5), including how Apple, Google, Roku and the TV manufacturers evolve them

Become the team's expert in video advertising technology: client-side, server-side and server-guided ad insertion, SCTE-35 and date range signaling, VAST and VMAP, Google Ad Manager, and ad measurement and viewability, and where the market is heading

Lead research into emerging player and advertising capabilities such as interactive and shoppable formats, multi-view and personalized ad experiences, and analyze what leading streaming services ship to identify where the Red Bull Streaming Platform leads or lags

COMMUNICATION

Exhibit strong project management skills and follow-up with stakeholders across Santa Monica, Salzburg and the tenant teams. Staying on top of deadlines and proactively communicating changes in delivery dates or scope to management and team leads is critical!

Distill requirements, share feedback, and facilitate verbal and written discussion among player engineers, encoding, Ad Operations, ad sales and non-technical stakeholders in two time zones

Use collaborative tools to sketch and define preliminary playback and advertising experiences and user journeys across TV, mobile and web

Build and deliver presentations and player demos; write and review Product Requirements Documents (PRDs) and technical specifications for player and advertising features

Manage stakeholders across the three tenants and keep them apprised of milestones, progress, and results