THIS WEEK · 24 AUGUST 2026
BY CHRIS · WEEKLY SENIOR SEAT SCAN
Eighty senior seats, and one of them is here in the Middle East. Every Monday we read the hiring boards across the companies our members work for, and we count what we find. This week we read 82 companies. Six boards would not open. Of the 76 we could read, 43 were carrying nothing at all at director level or above. The remaining 33 companies were carrying 80 senior roles between them. Then you look at where those 80 sit, and the week gets more interesting. North America took 47. The United Kingdom took 15. Between them, two markets absorbed 78 per cent of every senior seat that opened across this industry last week. The Middle East took one. A Lead Architect role at STARZPLAY in Dubai. One, out of eighty.
What the market is telling us
What five weeks of tracking is telling us
The vendor layer has gone quiet
Four out of five broadcaster, sport and streamer boards are carrying a senior opening right now. Only one in four vendor boards is. Synamedia, MediaKind, Broadpeak, Ateme, Velocix, Qwilt, Telestream, Irdeto, Verimatrix, Nagra, Friend MTS, Kaltura, Conviva, Accedo, Titan OS, Cleeng, Amagi, NPAW, Vizrt, Grass Valley, EVS, Mux, castLabs, Axinom and M2A Media were all read this morning. All carrying nothing senior. If you work vendor side, that is worth knowing before you assume the door is open.
The money has moved to measurement
Seven ad tech and measurement boards produced 17 of the 80 roles, more than a fifth of everything open, from a fraction of the companies. Samba TV alone is carrying nine senior seats, including a chief financial officer and a VP for EMEA. When the measurement layer hires this hard, it is usually because the advertising money behind it has become serious enough to need proving.
And the roles themselves have changed character
Commercial seats just outnumber product and engineering, 31 to 29. Crunchyroll is hiring a VP purely for content protection and anti piracy. Sportradar wants a VP for security operations. DAZN is hiring someone to own identity and access across the entire platform. These are not the roles you create when you are racing to grow. They are the roles you create when you are protecting what you have built, tightening the machine, and making the existing subscriber worth more. That is a more mature industry than the one most of us joined, and on balance it is a healthier one.
Deltatre is the exception that proves it
They opened the same Technical Director seat for OTT delivery in the United Kingdom, in Italy and in Toronto, all in the same week. Nobody opens one role on three continents at once unless something underneath has shifted, and our read is that delivery leadership has quietly become the scarce thing, rather than the engineers.
The data
What the 80 seats look like
Where the senior seats actually opened
North America and the UK took 78 per cent of every senior seat that opened this week. The Middle East took one.
Who is actually hiring, and who has stopped
Four in five broadcaster, sport and streamer boards are carrying a senior opening. One in four vendor boards is. One in seven in the Gulf.
What they are hiring someone to do
Commercial seats just outnumber product and engineering, 31 to 29. These read as revenue and margin hires rather than building for growth.
The rest of the board
Every live senior seat this Monday
Everything below was verified live this Monday. Where a closing date is shown it is real. This week three senior doors shut within days of opening, so treat the dates with respect.
Middle East
1 rolesLead Architect, OTT Applications & Media Engineering
STARZPLAY · Dubai, UAE
United Kingdom
15 rolesHead of Pre-Sales Consultancy
Arqiva · London / Winchester, UK
Head of Multiplatform Commissioning
BBC · Flexible, UK
Technical Director, OTT Delivery
Deltatre · United Kingdom
Director, Dubbing Procurement
Deluxe · London, UK
VP, Sales, EMEA Broadband
Harmonic · United Kingdom
Director of Consumer Products & Retail
ITV · London, UK
Head of Architecture, Studios Tech
ITV · London, UK
Head of Product, Studios Technology
ITV · London, UK
Principal Enterprise Architect
ITV · London, UK
VP, Brand Solutions
ITV · London, UK
Senior Director, Product Management, International Strategy
Samba TV · London, UK
VP, EMEA
Samba TV · London, UK
Head of Data Science
Sky · Osterley, UK
Head of Account Management, Playradar
Sportradar · London / Vienna / Ljubljana
VP, Security Operations
Sportradar · London, UK
Europe
7 rolesDirector of Product Marketing
Bitmovin · Remote, Europe
VP Global Marketing Strategy
Canal+ · Issy-les-Moulineaux, France
VP / Head of Engineering, Identity, Access & User Management
DAZN · Amsterdam, Netherlands
Principal Engineer, Android
Deltatre · Italy
Technical Director, OTT Delivery
Deltatre · Italy
Video Principal .NET Engineer
Deltatre · Italy
Engineering Director, Partner Enablement Applications
Netflix · Warsaw, Poland
Asia Pacific
7 rolesCreative Director, Prime Video Japan
Amazon Prime Video · Tokyo, Japan
Head of Prime Video Channels, Japan
Amazon Prime Video · Tokyo, Japan
VP, Growth & Development
DAZN · Tokyo, Japan
Senior Director, Marketing Partnerships & Brand Solutions
JioHotstar · Mumbai, India
Senior Director, Marketing, South
JioHotstar · Bengaluru, India
Senior Director, Product Management
JioHotstar · Bengaluru, India
Director, Content Localization, APAC
Netflix · Tokyo / Seoul / Singapore
Africa
2 rolesCommercial & Marketing Director, CANAL+ Telecom Nigeria
Canal+ · Lagos, Nigeria
Director of Operations, CANAL+ Telecom Burkina Faso
Canal+ · Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Latin America
1 rolesHead of Marketing, Mexico
Tubi · Mexico City, Mexico
North America
7 rolesDirector, Marketing & Growth Analytics
AMC Networks · New York
Vice President, Strategic Finance and Corp Dev
AMC Networks · New York
Senior Sales Director, Media
Brightcove · Remote, USA
Principal AI & Automation Engineer
Comcast Technology Solutions · Philadelphia
Vice President, Commercial Operations
Comscore · New York
Head of eCommerce
Crunchyroll · Los Angeles
Strategy & Operations Director, Global Commerce
Crunchyroll · Dallas
40 more senior seats are waiting inside the community
In order to get full access to all 80 live senior seats this week, plus next week's board before anyone else, join the OTTRED community at www.ottred.com or by downloading the app.
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One thing to be clear about
This is a snapshot of the open market, read from public boards, shared with you because it is useful and for no other reason. If you apply to one of these, you apply directly, and we hope it goes brilliantly for you.
What we do care about, quietly and stubbornly, is being the most distinguished headhunting firm in the world for senior media roles, on both sides of the industry: the consumer facing businesses and the vendors who supply them. That is the standard we hold ourselves to, and the reason we read these boards every single week for our members.
If one of these roles is nearly you and you want an honest read on it before you move, ask me. And if you know of a senior role that belongs on this list, add it below in the comments for other members. This is better when it comes from all of us.
Chris
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