Origin-Shield and Cache-Coherence Recovery Leader

The mandate

A new origin-shield topology concentrated simultaneous cache misses while entitlement responses were cached under keys that did not preserve market and package context. During a flagship match, origins saturated, legitimate viewers received stale denials and some expired rights remained playable. The content-delivery executive departed after the incident review found fragmented ownership across CDN, origin, identity and event-command teams.

The interim must begin in Cape Town within two weeks and serve for eleven months. A permanent streaming-edge search begins after one flagship event completes on the revised shield and entitlement architecture, expected around month five. The successor will overlap for six weeks and must lead a full-capacity rehearsal, a provider isolation exercise and the final live-event command review.

Handover requires cache keys and freshness rules to preserve content, market, device, entitlement and revocation context; shield failure and bypass behaviour to remain inside origin capacity; three major events to meet playback and rights-integrity thresholds; invalidation to be observed end to end; and the successor to accept provider obligations, capacity envelopes, exceptions and event-command authority.

The interim may freeze edge releases, alter shield topology, isolate a provider, set cache and invalidation standards, redirect internal teams and approve up to ZAR 210 million within the recovery programme. Rights-policy changes, permanent hiring, new multiyear CDN contracts, customer compensation and single commitments above ZAR 45 million require committee approval. The seat cannot override licensed territory or content-security rules.

Player-feature roadmaps, content acquisition, advertising technology and general corporate identity are explicitly excluded. The mandate covers origin shielding, cache semantics, entitlement delivery at the edge, invalidation, provider capacity, event observability, failure command and the operating structure required for coherent global playback.

Why this seat is open

The event exposed a design that protected average origin load but amplified correlated misses and allowed commercial rights state to become stale at the edge. Executive departure left each component team optimising its own recovery signal ahead of the viewer journey. Temporary authority is needed to reset cache contracts, prove them during real peaks and induct a permanent leader before the next rights cycle.

What you will own

• Reconstruct request, entitlement, key, cache, shield, origin, invalidation and playback behaviour across affected markets and providers.
• Define cache-key dimensions, freshness, negative caching, revocation, invalidation, stale-serving and bypass rules by rights consequence.
• Decide shield topology, request collapsing, prefill, load shedding, origin reserve and regional isolation for scheduled and surprise demand.
• Establish capacity envelopes joining forecast concurrency, cache efficiency, bitrate mix, entitlement calls, provider headroom and failure redistribution.
• Install viewer-level evidence for start failure, denial correctness, stale rights, cache path, origin pressure, regional quality and recovery.
• Command event rehearsals covering cold cache, shield loss, invalidation storm, entitlement degradation, provider failure and unexpected audience concentration.
• Transfer topology, tested limits, event playbooks, provider actions, exceptions and command roles through successor-led flagship operations.

Candidate qualifications

• Held executive operational accountability for large live-streaming, broadcast-over-IP or comparable event-driven content delivery.
• Recovered an origin overload or cache-stampede incident involving shield topology, correlated miss or unsafe fallback.
• Designed cache semantics for entitlements, revocation or market-sensitive rights where stale answers carried commercial consequence.
• Capacity-planned origins and CDNs for failure redistribution and cold-cache behaviour, not average hit rate alone.
• Built outside-in viewer evidence linking request path, rights decision and playback outcome across multiple providers.
• Transferred high-stakes event command to permanent leadership through rehearsals and observed live operations.

Non-negotiables

• Can start in Cape Town within two weeks and attend all three flagship rehearsals plus monthly provider reviews.
• Will accept exclusive executive duty and continuous escalation availability during scheduled live events.
• Brings large-event cache and origin operations; general video product or enterprise CDN procurement alone is insufficient.
• Must disclose current relationships with CDN, rights, streaming-platform, identity and observability providers.

1. 49 words maximum. State your earliest Cape Town start and the largest concurrent live audience under your operational command.
2. 49 words maximum. Describe a cache-key omission that created a rights or entitlement failure rather than merely stale content.
3. 49 words maximum. Which rehearsal would prove an origin shield protects capacity when an entire region begins cold?