Product Manager, Streaming Platform: Player & Advertising Technology

Red Bull•Santa Monica, CA

1d•$116,000 - $174,000

About The Position

Red Bull Media House North America is hiring a Product Manager to own the video player and player SDKs for the Red Bull Streaming Platform, which powers Red Bull TV, ServusTV On and Rally.TV across mobile, web, connected TV and game console apps. The Product Manager leads a cross-platform Player Squad and owns the player vision, roadmap and quality bar across every platform supported by the service. The role covers the end-to-end playback experience for live, linear and on-demand content, as well as advertising technology within the player. This includes playback over HLS and DASH, DRM, adaptive bitrate, audio and subtitle tracks, player controls and interactive features. The Product Manager defines the advertising insertion roadmap and partners with encoding, Google Ad Manager and Ad Operations teams to coordinate ad signaling, insertion, rendering, measurement, decisioning and reporting. The Product Manager consolidates requests from the platform’s three tenants and client product teams into a prioritized backlog; sets product success metrics; oversees quality strategy, certification and release readiness; manages vendor relationships and build-versus-buy decisions; and leads incident triage during live events and playback or advertising escalations. The role also develops product strategy by researching streaming and advertising technologies and emerging capabilities, while building alignment among engineering and business stakeholders across Santa Monica, Salzburg and tenant teams.

Requirements

Fluent in English.
At least 3 years of Product Management experience owning a video player, streaming playback or video advertising product.
Deep working knowledge of HLS and DASH, including manifests, adaptive bitrate, low latency and DRM such as FairPlay, Widevine and PlayReady.
Hands-on experience with client-side, server-side and server-guided ad insertion; SCTE-35 markers and HLS date range tags; VAST and VMAP; and Google Ad Manager for video.
Experience with AWS Elemental Media Services (MediaLive, MediaPackage and MediaTailor) or equivalent live streaming infrastructure.
Familiarity with interactive player features such as multi-view, live timeline events, in-player overlays, and shoppable or data-driven formats.
Experience leading an engineering squad and setting quality standards, including test strategy and release readiness.
Experience with quality-of-experience and advertising-performance tools such as Datadog, Datazoom or Conviva, or ad server reporting, and a track record of using data to make product decisions.
Experience managing player and advertising vendors, including SDK licensing and build-versus-buy decisions.
Comfort working directly with engineers on technical topics, including reading manifests, logs and ad responses and reproducing playback issues on devices.
Experience leading agile development, including sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews and retrospectives.
Ability to influence and lead high-performing cross-functional teams.
Strong project management, teamwork, problem-solving and strategic-thinking skills.
Outstanding written and oral communication skills for daily interaction with engineering, legal, product management and program management stakeholders.
Authorized to work in the United States as a U.S. citizen, U.S. permanent resident or holder of a valid visa.

Nice To Haves

German language skills.
Experience with player frameworks on connected TV, game console and web platforms, such as AVPlayer, ExoPlayer and Media3, Roku, Shaka Player or Bitmovin.
Experience with live sports or event streaming at scale, including FAST and linear channels.

Responsibilities

Lead the Player Squad by setting priorities, running planning and refinement, and serving as the single product owner for player engineers across Apple, Android, Roku, smart TV and web teams.
Own the vision, strategy and roadmap for the video player and player SDKs across Apple, Android, Roku, smart TV, game console and web platforms.
Own the end-to-end playback experience for live, linear and on-demand content, including HLS and DASH, DRM, adaptive bitrate, audio and subtitle tracks, controls and interactive features.
Define and prioritize the player advertising roadmap, including client-side, server-side and server-guided ad insertion, ad rendering, tracking and measurement.
Collaborate with the encoding team on ad signaling and insertion and the AWS Elemental Media Services stack so stream conditioning, ad markers and manifests support the player roadmap.
Collaborate with Google Ad Manager and Ad Operations on ad decisioning, configuration and reporting.
Triage and prioritize requests from Red Bull TV, ServusTV On, Rally.TV and client product teams into one player backlog, and communicate decisions and trade-offs.
Set player quality standards and define the test strategy with QA, including device coverage, advertising scenarios and live-event readiness.
Define and review launch success metrics for playback quality, advertising performance and interactive feature adoption, using results to inform the roadmap.
Own product requirements for shared video player SDKs, including integration guidelines, versioning, release cadence and integration-team support.
Manage player and advertising vendor relationships, SDK licensing, build-versus-buy decisions and standard vendor contracts with Legal and Procurement.
Lead player incident triage during live events and playback or advertising escalations; maintain documentation, runbooks and ad integration guidelines.
Ensure player certification, accessibility, privacy and platform store requirements are met across device families.
Champion collaboration among design, the Player Squad and client engineering teams, remove obstacles and align delivery to the player vision.
Build and maintain relationships with technical and business stakeholders across encoding, Ad Operations, tenant and client product teams.
Develop expertise in streaming delivery, player technology and video advertising, and research emerging capabilities and competing services.
Distill requirements and facilitate written and verbal discussions among engineering, encoding, Ad Operations, ad sales and non-technical stakeholders across two time zones.
Use collaborative tools to sketch and define playback and advertising experiences and user journeys across TV, mobile and web.
Prepare presentations and player demos; write and review product requirements documents and technical specifications.
Manage stakeholders across the three tenants and keep them informed about milestones, progress and results.
Manage project timelines and proactively communicate delivery-date or scope changes to management and team leads.
Lead the agile development process, including sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews and retrospectives.