Yahoo! Optimizing Video Streams+Region-Based Content Gating

Challenge: Live-stream viewers had no way to pause, rewind, or replay content. With user expectations shifting toward on-demand control, the absence of DVR-like features posed a major retention risk.

Solution: I led the zero-to-one launch of session-based playback, reframing it as a strategic retention priority and delivering a scalable solution that improved engagement while cutting costs.

What I Built:
• Defined the opportunity → positioned playback control as a retention risk and competitive requirement
• Built and aligned teams → unified engineering, UX and business leaders around a session-caching model, linking outcomes to business risk
• Balanced UX, compliance, and scale → delivered playback controls while introducing EU-compliant geoblocking and optimizing multi-CDN delivery
• Drove cost efficiency → avoided costly DVR infrastructure by designing session-level caching pipelines that reduced storage needs

Impact:
• 35% user engagement within months of release
• 18% cloud storage cost reduction through session-level caching
• 50% faster delivery timelines by focusing execution and aligning priorities
• Reduced churn risk while modernizing platform expectations