Neil is available for hire
Hire NeilNeil Walker
Verified Expert in Product Management
Product Manager
Los Angeles, CA, United States
Toptal member since October 9, 2024
Expertise
Bio
Neil is a product management and product operations leader with 25 years of experience in the live and on-demand streaming industry, working in over 30 countries. He has held leadership positions at companies ranging from mature organizations to startups, including BBC, Vodafone, Sky, Akamai, RealNetworks, and FloSports. In all roles, Neil has instigated projects, resulting in new revenue streams or significant step-change growth in existing products.
Project Highlights
BBC iPlayer
Led the development of the product feature, technical specifications, and cost modeling, including the effort to gain funding for an initial pilot.
Sky Broadcasting Streaming Platform Overhaul
Reduced operating costs by over 50% and boosted NPS by 30% and platform availability from under 80% to over 99.95% by initiating and managing a company-wide project to remedy systemic issues impacting Sky's streaming and over-the-top (OTT) services.
Broadcast Chain Improvement Program
Defined and led a program of work to rationalize the live-streaming broadcast chain for a sports broadcaster—improving NPS and CSAT, lowering operational costs by over 40%, and boosting video availability from 97% to 99.5%.
Expertise
- Agile
- Business Modeling
- Content Delivery Networks (CDN)
- Jira
- Product Management
- Video Encoding
- Video Production
- Video on Demand (VOD)
Work Experience
Senior Product Manager, Streaming
2022 - 2024
FloSports
- Oversaw live and on-demand video delivery and streaming platform strategy for an online sports broadcaster that produces over 35,000 events per year.
- Improved CSAT and NPS by 35% and 25%, respectively, reduced operational costs by 20%, and enhanced platform availability by 30% by implementing a company-wide program to unify streaming systems under a central leadership role.
- Increased advertising revenues by over 300% by identifying gaps in play using AI and implementing systems to create advertising inventory autonomously in sporting events.
- Launched free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels to increase advertising revenue from free sports content. These added revenue from non-subscribers, a previously untapped revenue stream.
- Reduced production costs for events by over 80% by implementing a trial to use AI in place of production staff in the broadcast chain and increased audience engagement by improving content dynamism.
Owner
2019 - 2022
Independent
- Enabled a boutique consultancy to win clients in the media sector by productizing and modularizing consulting services. Their primary clients were entertainment partners providing residual payment services for SAG-AFTRA.
- Built an inventory management system using Ruby on Rails, Python, and Rust for a startup providing snack boxes to remote workers during COVID-19.
- Developed a serverless encoding platform using AWS Elemental and AWS Lambda.
Engagement Manager
2017 - 2018
Akamai Technologies
- Provided guidance and systems to Rogers Communications and Electronic Arts to remove security threats from their internet properties.
- Managed large-scale game releases for Electronic Arts to ensure that properties such as Star Wars Battlefront II and Battlefield 1 were available globally on the day of release.
- Increased monthly recurring revenues from my portfolio of clients by 150% YOY.
Senior Managing Consultant
2014 - 2016
Huawei Technologies Co.
- Provided OTT service business modeling and technical design advice to Telekom Srbija (Serbia), STC (KSA), Globe (Philippines), and Bharti Airtel (India), achieving sales of telecommunications equipment for those services worth $150+ million.
- Negotiated a content supply deal with Lyca Mobile that unlocked a larger hardware deal worth $75+ million.
- Productized and modularized Huawei's consulting offerings so the sales team could more easily sell consulting services to clients, resulting in engagements with Telekom Srbija, STC, and Globe.
Head of IP Video Services
2011 - 2013
Sky UK
- Raised NPS by 30%, lowered operating costs by over 50%, and boosted platform availability from under 80% to over 99.95% by initiating and managing a company-wide project to remedy systemic issues impacting Sky's various streaming and OTT services.
- Implemented a sentiment and usage monitoring system for streaming content, which identified an underserved customer segment that led to a joint venture with Disney and the creation of Disney-branded content on Sky.
- Led the infrastructure portion of the launch in 2012 of NOW (formerly Now TV), an OTT service targeted at cord-cutters. With the purchase of Sky by Comcast, the service became available in the US.
Head of Product Strategy
2010 - 2011
App.co
- Provided a product management framework that was more suitable to the company's product and strategic objectives than was previously in place.
- Supported this startup's developers by coding in Ruby on Rails.
- Created a business model and gained initial angel funding.
Senior Global Product Manager, Film & TV
2004 - 2009
Vodafone Group
- Launched video streaming as part of the initial roll-out of 3G in the UK.
- Partnered with Sky and HBO to launch MobileTV in the UK, which became the most profitable data service in Vodafone Group.
- Lobbied successfully at the C-level to move away from legacy cellular systems and adopt HTTP-based streaming for future video products, thus avoiding hundreds of millions in future spending.
- Removed $25+ million in duplicate costs by creating a Vodafone Group video streaming strategy, which required the agreement and coordination of 10 Vodafone operating companies and over 150 stakeholders.
Technical Solutions Consultant, Online Video
2004 - 2006
BBC
- Created BBC iPlayer's initial specification and successfully lobbied the senior leadership team to gain funding.
- Productized and streamlined the platform used to deliver web and streaming content for bbc.co.uk to provide an additional revenue stream for BBC.
- Guided production teams in moving video content onto the BBC website for TV shows such as Top Gear and Doctor Who.
VP, Products & Services
2000 - 2002
Virtue Broadcasting
- Provided a streaming and download platform for EMI, BMG, and Zomba to distribute music videos online so they could discontinue using physical tapes.
- Broadcasted live events for artists such as Radiohead, Sting, and Spice Girls. These events broke records for streaming media audience sizes.
- Produced and distributed content for reality TV shows, such as Popstars and Survivor, which was a first in the UK market.
Technical Consultant, Northern Europe
1999 - 2000
RealNetworks
- Provided technical guidance to the BBC, enabling them to exclusively move their TV and radio streaming onto the RealNetworks platform. The BBC became the second most valuable customer of RealNetworks.
- Turned around a failing relationship with Freeserve, a leading UK ISP, by providing extensive technical guidance for their streaming services. As a result, RealNetworks was selected to work on Big Brother when Freeserve sponsored the show.
- Moved all of Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso radio stations online.
Project History
BBC iPlayer
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayerLed the development of the product feature, technical specifications, and cost modeling, including the effort to gain funding for an initial pilot.
BBC iPlayer is the BBC's OTT platform. It delivers BBC entertainment and news content to various devices, including iOS, Android, the web, Apple TV, Fire TV sticks, and Smart TVs. In 2023, iPlayer was used to watch 7+ billion pieces of content. It is also used regularly by over 25% of the UK population. iPlayer received a BAFTA and a Royal Television Society award for innovation.
Sky Broadcasting Streaming Platform Overhaul
https://www.sky.com/pages/sky-go/Reduced operating costs by over 50% and boosted NPS by 30% and platform availability from under 80% to over 99.95% by initiating and managing a company-wide project to remedy systemic issues impacting Sky's streaming and over-the-top (OTT) services.
Sky Broadcasting is the leading pay-TV platform in the UK, installed in 28% of British homes. When I joined, they were struggling to grow their OTT companion streaming app SkyGo and were also due to launch Now TV for cord-cutters. Reliability was poor, and they needed to improve it to reduce churn and increase acquisition.
Broadcast Chain Improvement Program
http://www.flosports.tvDefined and led a program of work to rationalize the live-streaming broadcast chain for a sports broadcaster—improving NPS and CSAT, lowering operational costs by over 40%, and boosting video availability from 97% to 99.5%.
FloSports delivers over 35,000 sporting events per year over its streaming platform. With such a volume, automation is absolutely essential, and only a handful of events each year were delivered using traditional broadcast techniques. However, its video streaming platform had grown organically, and although there were highly skilled experts working on the broadcast chain, there was room for improvement in terms of cooperation and collaboration.
I introduced a framework for interaction that allowed the broadcast chain to be treated as a single product rather than a collection of separate components. I removed areas of duplication and identified and addressed blindspots. Ultimately, operational costs were reduced by over 40%, and video availability improved from 97% to 99.5%. NPS and CSAT improved, removing key churn drivers such as low video quality and reliability.
The program also allowed teams to use their time more productively to introduce innovative solutions such as AI-driven advertising systems and AI-driven camera operators, which resulted in additional revenues and cost reductions.
I introduced a framework for interaction that allowed the broadcast chain to be treated as a single product rather than a collection of separate components. I removed areas of duplication and identified and addressed blindspots. Ultimately, operational costs were reduced by over 40%, and video availability improved from 97% to 99.5%. NPS and CSAT improved, removing key churn drivers such as low video quality and reliability.
The program also allowed teams to use their time more productively to introduce innovative solutions such as AI-driven advertising systems and AI-driven camera operators, which resulted in additional revenues and cost reductions.
Education
2013 - 2014
Master of Business Administration (MBA) in International Business
Kingston University London - London, UK
1991 - 1995
Bachelor's Degree in Physics with Astrophysics
University of Leeds - Leeds, UK
Skills
Tools
Jira, Slack, Zoom, Office 365, Google Docs, Confluence, Asana, Turbo Pascal
Paradigms
Agile, Kanban
Platforms
Google Chrome, Apple TV
Other
Strategy, Business Modeling, Video Streaming, Audio Streaming, Video Encoding, Audio Encoding, Streaming, Video on Demand (VOD), Content Delivery Networks (CDN), Product Management, Direct to Consumer (D2C), Business Process Modeling, Financial Modeling, Video Production, AI Product Management, Microsoft Teams, Statistics, Computer Modeling, Computer Programming, C, Accounting, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), iOS, Android, Smooth Streaming, Fire TV, Roku, AI Agents, Machine Vision, Machine Learning, AWS Elemental, Serverless
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