Nathan Payne
Most product decisions are invisible—until they aren’t.
For ten years, I worked on the streaming platforms behind Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN. I started at MLB.com and BAMTECH, joined Disney through the 2017 acquisition, and spent five years leading the Native Client Platform across PlayStation, Xbox, Amazon Fire TV, Linux set-top boxes, and smart TVs.
I like working through problems where systems disagree, the rules leave something unresolved, or a product claims more than it can prove: a codec mismatch, an ambiguous financial rule, an AI agent that knows a policy but skips it. I work out which source to trust and what the product needs to do, then make that clear enough to design, test, and operate.
I build and operate products with Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor. I also built Mergepath, the review and enforcement system those agents work under. That work keeps bringing me back to three questions: what evidence is enough, which decisions an agent can make, and when I need to decide. Open to senior product and platform roles, especially in streaming infrastructure, developer tools, and workflows that use AI.
Read my résuméI write about what I asked for, what shipped, and what I had to change.