Nathan Payne
Senior Platform Product Manager
San Francisco, CA[email protected]
nathanpayne.comlinkedin.com/in/nathanpaynegithub.com/nathanjohnpayne
Summary
Senior Platform Product Manager with 20+ years across media technology, consumer streaming, partner ecosystems, and platform infrastructure. Built and led systems behind Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN across Fire TV, PlayStation, Xbox, Roku, smart TVs, and major MVPD set-top boxes. Turns messy real-world constraints—partner workflows, certification gates, codec compatibility, legal compliance, and operational telemetry—into durable APIs, structured data, executive-grade reporting, and shipping software.
Recently focused on AI-augmented product development: building working products with coding agents, designing multi-agent review systems, and developing the governance and measurement practices that make agent-assisted delivery reliable.
Skills
- Product & Platform
- Platform strategy · Partner ecosystems · Device certification · Roadmap ownership · Program leadership · Release governance · Operational readiness
- Analytics & Operations
- Snowflake · Looker · Conviva · Sentry · Datadog · PostHog · Financial modeling · KPI frameworks · Executive reporting · Portfolio dashboards
- AI-Augmented Development
- Claude Code · Codex · Cursor · CodeRabbit · Anthropic / Claude API · OpenAI API · MCP · LLM application development · Multi-agent code review · AI-assisted PR pipelines · Agent governance · Agent failure-mode diagnosis
- Technical
- TypeScript · JavaScript · React · Next.js · Astro · Tailwind · Vite · Zod · Firebase · Bash · Python · GitHub Actions · Playwright · Vitest
- Domains
- Connected-TV streaming · Subscription activation · Media platforms · Sports and entertainment · Partner and vendor management
Experience
Senior Product Manager—Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology
Product lead for the SDK and platform layer that runs Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN on partner devices. Scope included device certification, partner integrations, platform observability, release engineering, and cross-program alignment with player, engineering, product, and TPM teams.
- Led Disney’s launch on Amazon’s Linux-based Vega OS (Kepler), a ground-up replacement of Fire TV’s Android stack with a native Linux OS. Ported Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN, landed the September 2025 announcement, and shipped on time in October with no measurable engagement impact on Disney’s fourth-largest living-room platform (~18M monthly active devices).
- Conceived NCPv3 and secured approval for an $18.1M investment. The proposed JavaScript/React runtime would let Disney’s mature JavaScript app run across PlayStation, Xbox, Vega OS, MVPD set-top boxes, and smart TVs, so Disney could retire the parallel Rust app and consolidate two codebases and two teams into one. Success depended entirely on app teams choosing to build on the shared runtime.
- Rebuilt partner device intelligence from spreadsheets to structured data, replacing 40+ inconsistent partner questionnaires with a two-tier qualification and certification system backed by Snowflake, Partner Portal data, and Looker dashboards. A German HEVC patent enforcement action forced the rebuild by exposing critical gaps in Disney’s ability to pull partner device data on demand; the same system now supports AV1/HEVC compliance analysis across Germany and Brazil.
- Led On-Device Activation, a multi-partner subscription-activation program that lets subscribers activate Disney+ through their pay-TV operator account instead of re-authenticating in-app. Owned partner onboarding, integration sequencing, certification cycles, defect triage, and post-launch stabilization across EMEA, LATAM, and APAC operators including Fetch in Australia and Claro in Brazil.
- Shipped multiple ADK releases adding live playback, ad playback, advanced video/audio format support, text-to-speech, encrypted audio, and a Sentry→Datadog observability migration, including ADK 4.0 GA in March 2026 with a hot-swappable DMP player.
- Introduced an AI-powered PR review pipeline for the NCPF App Foundations squad, cutting median PR cycle time from 7.4 days to 4 and beating the 30% Q2 OKR target. Policy is now AI review plus two human reviewers, moving toward AI plus one.
- Owned platform health reporting across Conviva, Sentry, and Datadog, narrating FPS, error rates, Glimpse attribution, and AI PR cycle time to executives every week, and built automation to solve Sentry→Datadog dashboard portability.
Senior Technical Project Manager, Lead—Disney Streaming
Led front-end engineering teams that built and launched Disney+, the fastest-growing streaming service of all time, across connected devices.
- Brought Disney+ from concept to launch across living-room platforms, coordinating with engineering, design, product, QA, and release stakeholders.
- Led PlayStation prototyping that produced the first living-room Disney+ experience to launch.
- Rebuilt the Disney+ app for MVPD set-top boxes, recreating the full product experience on operators’ constrained hardware.
- Led Hulu through its PlayStation 5 launch.
Technical Project Manager—MLB Advanced Media / BAMTech Media
Managed OTT app development for Roku, Chromecast, PlayStation, and Xbox across MLBAM platforms and partners, including MLB.com, HBO, Fox Sports, Eurosport, MLS, and NHL. Owned iteration management, development coordination, feature scheduling, QA alignment, certification, and deployment.
Director of Information Technology—AJ+
Ran Broadcast Engineering, Media Operations, and IT for the launch of a 24/7 digital news operation and the AJ+ social video app. Built the live OTT streaming solution with Level 3, Adobe Primetime DRM, and Brightcove. Streamlined publishing to Adobe CQ CMS and syndicated to YouTube and Comcast Xfinity. Renegotiated vendor contracts for $335K in annual savings.
Senior Systems Architect—Current TV
Built ingest, playout, on-air graphics, and live-tweet moderation systems during Current TV’s pivot from user-generated content to prime-time network news. Launched Joy Behar: Say Anything, The Gavin Newsom Show, and The War Room with Jennifer Granholm within 30 days of the acquisition.
Systems Architect / Support Roles—CNN
Streamlined technology operations in CNN’s flagship bureau through automation and system upgrades. Conceived and led development of the CNN Magic Wall, a multi-touch, interactive collaboration platform for historical and real-time news data on air. Built the mobile video system for the $3M Election Express bus used in the 2008 YouTube debate. Built virtual studios in Chicago and Phoenix, using 36 HD camera feeds and computational rendering clusters to bring remote reporters on air as live 3D “holograms.” Managed $2M capital budgets per project within a $60M operating budget.
Education
B.S., Management Information Systems & Decision Sciences
Certifications
- Building and Scaling Subscription Businesses (BUS 78)
- Certified Scrum Professional - Product Owner (CSP-PO)
- Principles & Qualities of Genuine Leadership
Projects
Products—and the decisions behind them · nathanpayne.com/projects
Products across consumer, enterprise, finance, and developer tooling. Built with AI agents; case studies focus on the decisions, tradeoffs, and evidence behind them.
Selected projects:
SHIPPED
Five Across—Live Multiplayer Social Bingo Platform
React · TypeScript · Vite · Firebase · Cloud Functions · Cloudflare Workers · PostHog
Live multiplayer bingo for group trips, built and operated end to end: daily themed cards, offline-first marking, and features shipped at sea. Played throughout a nine-night Mediterranean cruise; the engine has since run a second event, with a shared platform still ahead.
SHIPPED
Mergepath—Agent Governance Infrastructure
Bash · Python · GitHub Actions · 1Password · Claude Code · Codex · Cursor · CodeRabbit
Governance framework for AI-assisted software development: repository standards, automated review workflows, multi-agent validation, and CI-enforced documentation. As of October 2026, it runs across eight repositories—the hub and seven consumers.
SHIPPED
Override—Broadway Financial Operating System
Next.js · TypeScript · Tailwind · Firebase · Recharts · Vitest
Broadway financial modeling product that turns static deal documents into an interactive capitalization, waterfall, scenario, and investor-return model. Built as an AI coding exercise; it has not yet run a real capitalization. Informed by my investment in the revival of Proof.
ARCHIVED
Device Source of Truth—Partner Device Intelligence Platform
React · TypeScript · Vite · Tailwind · Zod · Firebase · Express · Vitest
Unified five fragmented partner-data feeds into one device registry, with AI-assisted questionnaire extraction and human authority over consequential commits. Public fork uses entirely synthetic data; production data and repository remain private.
PAUSED
Matchline—AI Career CRM
React · TypeScript · Vite · Tailwind · Firebase · Anthropic · OpenAI · Vitest
A career CRM that blocks any application claim not traced to approved evidence; the gate was never validated with users, and the export behind it remained a stub. Paused before launch at 48% extraction and 19% match against an 80% bar set before any measurement.
EXPERIMENT
Swipe Watch—Content Discovery Prototype
Vanilla JavaScript · Firebase Hosting
Swipe-based content discovery for Disney+ and Hulu. The prototype simulated the recommendation payoff it was meant to test, making reactions to the demo impossible to separate from reactions to the concept. Demoed to Disney’s EVP of Product.
SHIPPED
Friends & Family Billing—Shared-Bill Coordination
React · JavaScript · Vite · Firebase · Vitest · Playwright
Shared billing for recurring household costs that shows recipients the arithmetic, tracks settlement, and handles questions without requiring an account. Built for nine people across five households.
Writing
The AI-Augmented PM—nathanpayne.com/blog
Writing on AI-assisted product development, agent governance, multi-agent review patterns, and software delivery.
Selected essays: