In hyper-competitive streaming, platforms win or lose based on the strength of their data and AI infrastructure. Few leaders have shaped this foundation as directly as Manoj Yerrasani, who oversees data and personalization engineering for NBCUniversal’s global streaming technologies portfolio, including Peacock. Systems built under his leadership power billions of daily events, enable real-time decisioning at massive scale and support some of the most-watched moments in modern digital media across 89 countries and 3 continents.
With around two decades of industry experience, for Yerrasani, data is more than a technical asset. It is the connective tissue linking audiences to stories. “My inspiration to work in the data, AI and streaming technology space came from a deep interest in how data can shape human experiences at scale,” he says.
Platform leadership built across global transformations
Yerrasani’s career has been defined by navigating major industry transitions. Before joining NBCUniversal, he was a key engineering leader at Warner Bros. Discovery during one of the largest media mergers of the decade. He consolidated Discovery’s global search platform, which powered D+, Magnolia, and Eurosport, among others. He later led search and personalization services during the global rollout of Max, which now reaches audiences across the world. His work delivered multimillion-dollar efficiency gains and supported rapid scaling across diverse markets and infrastructures.
At NBCUniversal, Yerrasani led a major platform unification effort that extended Peacock’s Streaming Data Platform and Personalization Platform to global NBCU services, including Showmax, SkyShowtime and Now/Wow. The result was a unified engineering foundation that enabled a cutting-edge customer experience for NBCU’s global streaming audience.
Powering Peacock through record-breaking moments
Peacock has become a centerpiece of NBCUniversal’s streaming strategy, and Yerrasani’s platforms sit at the center of that growth. His systems handle enormous volumes of data processing, storage and transformations with sub-second latencies.
These capabilities have been essential in some of the biggest U.S. streaming events of recent years. The 2025 NFL Kickoff weekend generated an average streaming-minute audience of nearly 4 million, and the 2025–2026 NBA Opening Night drew approximately 5.6 million viewers, with a peak of nearly 7.1 million, making it the most-watched October opening night in 15 years.
These moments represent not only cultural milestones but also engineering stress tests that Yerrasani’s teams consistently meet.
Building AI-powered streaming experiences
Yerrasani’s focus extends beyond infrastructure. He is pioneering AI-first user experiences that adapt dynamically to each viewer. His contributions to the streaming industry include work on Real-Time Personalization and Whole-Page Optimization frameworks, which have helped shift streaming interfaces from static, fixed layouts to adaptive, context-aware experiences that personalize the entire page in real time. These AI frameworks have contributed to measurable lifts in watch-time, click-through rates, and discovery of long-tail catalog content.
“Personalization is more than just algorithms. It is about understanding audiences and connecting them to stories that matter,” Yerrasani says. His work bridges data science, machine learning engineering and editorial strategy to create experiences that feel intuitive rather than automated.
These capabilities are central to engagement, watch-time lift and content discovery, which are core metrics for modern streaming platforms.
Engineering for a world that never pauses
Whether supporting the Olympics, live NFL games, NBA openings or major film releases, Yerrasani’s systems are designed for a world where downtime is not acceptable. The architecture centers on reliability, federated scalability and rapid failover. Automation and real-time data quality checks ensure stability across millions of simultaneous interactions.
These engineering principles produce measurable business outcomes, from subscriber growth to higher ad monetization and improved operational efficiency.
A career shaped by the evolution of technology
Yerrasani’s journey reflects the evolution of major technologies themselves over the last two decades. He has progressed from enterprise automation to cloud transformation, from data engineering to AI-powered personalization and from platform consolidation to global-scale unification.
“In every project, I look for opportunities to redefine how technology enhances human connection,” he says. As competition intensifies across global streaming services, leaders who understand both the human and technical dimensions of streaming, like Yerrasani, are increasingly shaping what comes next.
Manoj Yerrasani’s work sits at the intersection of these forces. His systems are built for scale, reliability and creativity, enabling viewers to find the stories that matter in an ever-expanding universe of content.
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