Head of Product, Playback

Want to do the best work of your life? With 24 million customers in 6 countries, make your mark at Europe’s leading media and entertainment brand. A workplace where you can proudly be yourself; our people make Sky a truly exciting and inclusive place to work.
- “As Head of Product, Playback in our OTT team, you will be responsible for leading and executing the strategy to deliver the best possible viewing experience on NOW/Sky Ticket+ web, mobile and TV devices in UK, Germany, Italy and ROI. Using advanced data modelling you will set out streaming KPIs that bring the most benefit to our customers’ viewing experience, driving optimisation of the end-to-end content pipeline; from content acquisition, encoding, video delivery, CDNs and client playback. Success in this area is increasing engagement to reduce churn.”_ - **Ben Lavender, Group Director of Product Management**

**What you’ll do**:

- Define, monitor and react to streaming KPIs across all customer platforms
- Lead the optimisation of video encoding specifications to deliver the best viewing experience on any player or network, using objective video metrics
- Design processes and systems to validate cross-platform playback performance and picture quality using automation.
- Enhance the video playback experience with new features like UHD, high frame rate and low latency
- Provide dashboards and exploratory analysis (driving insights) across quality of experience, CDN performance, ABR configurations, etc that will inform and shape the NOW product experience.
- Drive collaboration across the wider organisation to optimise the end-to-end video streaming delivery workflow from camera to customer to improve quality of experience metrics
- Work effectively in a matrix organisational structure to influence decision-making and strategic direction of NOWs product priorities.
- The role will lead a group of video streaming specialists, data scientists, analysts and developers, both on and offshore.

**What you’ll bring**:

- 5+ years in video streaming on a consumer facing streaming product, ideally multi-country; with 2+ years as a manager.
- Deep technical understanding of the end-to-end OTT video streaming delivery workflow from camera to customer and how to optimise it to improve quality of service metrics: buffering, picture quality, error rate, start-up time and latency; through tools like Conviva and deep network packet-level inspection
- Deep experience of optimising video compression for OTT streaming using objective perceptual video quality assessment algorithms like VMAF, SSIMPlus or SwissQual.
- Deep understanding of the ecosystem of client-side video players, their relative strengths and weaknesses and how to optimise them
- Understanding of dynamic video advertising insertion, audience measurement and quality of service metrics
- Excellent quantitative data analysis, critical-thinking skills & exploratory modelling

**Department overview**:
We’re the Product Hub. We’re the team behind your favourite Sky products, and the platforms that power them. We make every moment magical, everywhere. Our team is made up of self-motivated, big thinkers who have a knack for solving problems and find new ways to captivate millions of customers by putting them at the heart of everything we do. From Sky Glass, Sky Q, Peacock and NOW to news and sports apps, we make entertainment even better and we can’t wait to get started on what’s next.

**Team overview**:
**Product Management**

Our Product Management team works closely with our design, delivery and business teams to create an unforgettable experience for our customers. From streaming products like NOW, to providing smart entertainment products like Sky Glass and Sky Go, and creating unforgettable Connected Living experiences, we’re the problem solvers who find smarter and simpler ways to connect customers to more of what they love.

**The Rewards**:
There’s a reason people can’t stop talking about **#LifeAtSky**. Our great range of rewards really are something special, here are just a few:

- Sky Q, for the TV you love all in one place
- A generous pension package
- Private healthcare
- Discounted mobile and broadband
- Access a wide range of exclusive Sky VIP rewards and experiences

**Where you’ll work**:
**Osterley**:
Our Osterley Campus is a 10-minute walk from Syon Lane train station. Or you can hop on one of our free shuttle buses that run to and from Osterley, Gunnersbury, Ealing Broadway and South Ealing tube stations. There’s also plenty of bike shelters and showers.

On campus, you’ll find 13 subsidised restaurants, cafes, and a Waitrose. You can keep in shape at our subsidised gym, catch the latest shows and movies at our cinema, get your car washed and even get pampered at our beauty salon.

**Inclusion**:
We take pride in our approach to diversity and inclusion: we’ve been recognised by The Times and Stonewall for this, and we’ve committed £30million to suppor