SEAN MCCARTHY
Cambridge,MA
Summary
Accomplished product leader with extensive experience in architecting and launching CDN, cloud, API-first, and data products for leading media organizations. Proven ability to deliver innovative solutions and drive product strategy, resulting in enhanced platform performance and significant cost savings. Skilled in fostering cross-functional collaboration and achieving executive buy-in for key initiatives.
Overview
11
11
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Director, Product, Video Technology Group
Paramount Global
Cambridge, MA
01.2023 - Current
- Promoted from principal PM, leading a cross-functional team of engineers and product managers
- Expanded team from four to twelve members, fostering a collaborative, creative, accountable and high-performance culture
- Oversaw product management of the central video platform team, spanning live & VOD transcoding, manifest manipulation, packaging, CDN/edge services, cross-platform playback, operational visibility, and client-analytics
- Played a key role in negotiating vendor contracts and fostering relationships with ISPs
- Spearheaded the adoption of an 'SVPG' inspired framework, establishing 'empowered product teams' consisting of engineering, product management, and architecture
- Deployed a multi-region origin shield, reducing origin egress fees, enabling localized shielding, preventing vendor lock-in and ensuring resiliency of delivery workflows.
Chair, QoE Working Group (part time)
Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA)
01.2023 - Current
- Defined group charter, outlining the group's goals, objectives, and scope
- Led a project standardizing CDN measurement techniques, involving development of an open-source task runner, RUM client, and client-side decisioning reference app
- Led a project defining and generating aggregate health metrics from raw CMCD data which are used as leading indicators of buffering and bitrate drops
- Fostered collaboration among working group members, encouraging knowledge sharing and best practices; aligning with other SVTA working groups such as Open Caching, Piracy, and Networking
- Vetted project proposals for relevancy, technical feasibility, and industry impact, ensuring alignment with the group's mission
- Provided thought leadership via industry publications, presentations, and participation in relevant conferences.
Principal Product Manager, Technical - Video Delivery, Experience & Optimization
Paramount Global
Cambridge, MA
01.2020 - 01.2023
- Lead the product vision and managed three platform-products focused on QoE observability and CDN workflows serving Paramount+, PlutoTV, CBS Sports, CBS News, Network 10, My5, and Viacom brands
- Designed a data platform capable of collecting 100% of encoder beacons, origin logs, cdn log and client beacons, enabling operations to troubleshoot content and component issues at an aggregate, session and request level
- Conceived of and implemented anti-piracy measures securing access to content while maintaining mid-stream CDN switching
- Saving the company resources and easing concerns of content licensees
- Identified and implemented three edge compute applications, creating business value in the form of bandwidth savings, cost savings, client processing improvements and facilitating deferred ad decisioning
- Decreased TCO of video stream delivery resulting in flat CDN y/o/y spend while experiencing a 40% increase in total bandwidth
- Act as Video Technology Group's QoE/Media Analytics subject matter expert.
Head of Technology Partnerships and Product Strategy
BITMOVIN
San Francisco, CA
01.2019 - 01.2020
- Led technology and strategy teams in a dynamic startup environment, enhancing feature adoption, product sales, net new bookings and pipeline generation
- In-house QoE/analytics subject matter expert
- Developed 'Cloud Connect', enabling software licensing for VPC deployments, catering to diverse clients such as the BBC and Hulu, with solutions valued at $200k+ ARR
- Developer evangelism and sales-enablement of three API products and a player SDK
- Defined success criteria and OKRs for Product teams and recruited a high-performing team of three
- Fostered partnerships with AWS, GCP, Microsoft Azure, Fastly, Akamai, Edgio, DRM providers, and other ecosystem partners.
Technical Manager, Product and Operations
AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES
Cambridge, MA
01.2017 - 01.2019
- Led Akamai's live-streaming service offering, from concept-generation through general availability
- Supported 4 Superbowls, 2 Olympics, and several other major traffic-record-breaking events on the Akamai network
- Integrated stream monitoring tools (Evertz, IneoQuest, Touchstream) to complement CDN observability, significantly reducing 'time to diagnose' and 'time to resolve' KPIs
- Implemented an NAB award-winning real-time data platform ('BOSS') intended for end-to-end stream troubleshooting
- Led the onboarding process for key accounts, including Hulu, Turner, Fox Sports and NBC Sports
- Launched an event-support service, achieving rapid growth and becoming the fastest-growing source of MRR for the media operations group.
Media Cloud Engineer - Senior, Lead
AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES
Cambridge, MA
01.2015 - 01.2017
- Analyzed encoder, player, and CDN data identifying configuration, content and component issues
- Strong understanding of the internet and CDNs - configuration, mapping, and network topology
- Demonstrated a thorough technical understanding of internet architecture and video streaming workflows while acting as an escalation point for a team of ten
- Managed customer relationships during service incidents and live events
- Consulting for OTT aggregators and international broadcasters CCTV (China), Hulu, and EuroSport
- Automated troubleshooting and mitigation procedures using Python scripts for increased efficiency.
Sales and Support Engineer
BLACKMAGIC DESIGN
Fremont, CA
01.2013 - 01.2015
- Offered knowledgeable sales guidance and technical support to broadcast engineers, systems integrators, software developers, and post-production professionals
- Strong understanding of SMPTE & SCTE standards, Databases, video/audio compressions and codecs
- SDK/API support for capture-hardware and encoding software integrations
- VFX compositing, color correction, and NLE software (DaVinci Resolve/Fusion).
Education
AI/ML for Business -
MIT Sloan School of Management
01.2020
MS, Technical Innovation & Entrepreneurship -
University of Massachusetts
01.2017
BA, Philosophy, Analytical/Critical Thinking -
University of Massachusetts
01.2013
Conversational Spanish -
Universidad de Cadiz
01.2013
Skills
- Big Data Platforms (BigQuery, Clickhouse, Dataflow, etc)
- Content Delivery Networks (CDNs)
- Internet and Streaming Protocols (HTTP, BGP, QUIC, DNS, HLS/DASH, etc)
- Media Players
- QoE Analytics and Optimization
- Capacity Planning
- AWS/GCP/Linode
- Video Encoding
- ML Pipelines/Feature Development
- Vendor Management
- Opex/Capex Modeling
- Agile Development
- Continuous Discovery & SVPG principles
- CI/CD, Linux, K8s
- SQL, Python, JavaScript
Certification
- Conviva, ODP Certification, May 2024
- Force Management, Command of the Message, January 2020
Accomplishments
- Implemented a real-time data platform (HDX/Clickhouse) capable of handling high-volume, high-cardinality log ingest (12+ Gbps) and ETL transforms, used for RCA of stream-impacting issues.
- Reduced mean time to diagnose, mitigate and resolve platform and QoE issues
- Reduced cost of data collection and processing by 70% while increasing data accessibility and retention
- Successfully planned and executed major live events, including Super Bowl LV and LVIII
- Pioneered the first real-world CMCD implementation (Common Media Client Data) on an OTT platform.
- Oversaw the scaling and international expansion of VOD and live services in over three dozen markets while operating a streaming platform delivering over 1000+ live events annually.
- Developed a proprietary multi-CDN traffic shaping platform powered by RUM data, replacing legacy DNS load balancing - decreasing connection induced rebuffering globally, and by 30% in problematic LATAM markets.
- Designed a unified API interface responsible for orchestrating six CDNs, preventing vendor lock-in and facilitating automated tasks (localized shielding, purge & geo/event specific optimizations)
Publications
CMCD at Work with Real-Time, Real-World Data, McCarthy, Sean, Law, William, Association for Computing Machinery, March 2022
Timeline
Director, Product, Video Technology Group
Paramount Global
01.2023 - Current
Chair, QoE Working Group (part time)
Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA)
01.2023 - Current
Principal Product Manager, Technical - Video Delivery, Experience & Optimization
Paramount Global
01.2020 - 01.2023
Head of Technology Partnerships and Product Strategy
BITMOVIN
01.2019 - 01.2020
Technical Manager, Product and Operations
AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES
01.2017 - 01.2019
Media Cloud Engineer - Senior, Lead
AKAMAI TECHNOLOGIES
01.2015 - 01.2017
Sales and Support Engineer
BLACKMAGIC DESIGN
01.2013 - 01.2015
AI/ML for Business -
MIT Sloan School of Management
MS, Technical Innovation & Entrepreneurship -
University of Massachusetts
BA, Philosophy, Analytical/Critical Thinking -
University of Massachusetts
Conversational Spanish -
Universidad de Cadiz