Hulu Bolsters Technology Leadership With Two New Executives
Hulu have announced that it has welcomed two new senior leaders to its technology team: Joe Bentley as Senior Vice President, Engineering, and Jim Denney as Vice President, Product Management. Bentley and Denney will both report directly to Hulu’s CTO, Dan Phillips. Additionally, Billie Sue Chafins has been promoted to Vice President, Software Development and Head of Hulu’s Seattle Office. She will report directly to Bentley and will assume responsibility for the decision-making and operations of the company’s office in Seattle. These new appointments strengthen Hulu’s technology organization and will advance the company’s goals to build the best experience for viewers and continue to accelerate innovation in the streaming video space. Hulu’s new leaders will also play a key role in further scaling the technology team, with plans to hire an additional 190+ roles in the remainder of 2018 alone.
As Senior Vice President, Engineering, Joe Bentley will be responsible for leading Hulu’s software development organization, consisting of Hulu’s video streaming technology, content platform, client platform and devices, subscriptions and billing, platform engineering, architecture, QA, technical program management, research, machine learning, and AI. He will be responsible for managing Hulu’s long-term technical strategy, aligning team efforts to launch new features, and fostering innovation amongst Hulu’s developers.
Bentley joins Hulu from GoPro where he was Vice President of Software Engineering, responsible for all software engineering and research, including developing mobile and desktop products, web and cloud services, data sciences engineering, AI, and codec research. Before joining GoPro, Bentley held various leadership roles at Amazon where he led the creation, development, and launch of Amazon’s Fire TV product line as well as the engineering for Digital Platform, Amazon’s cloud services for Digital Products.
Bentley began his role on Monday, August 13, and will be based in Hulu’s Santa Monica office.
As Vice President, Product Management, Jim Denney will be responsible for leading Hulu’s product organization, which includes the service platform, billing and payments, experience and engagement, device partnerships and integrations, and advanced technology teams. Denney will be tasked with directing Hulu’s long-term product strategy, establishing product team goals, and aligning cross-team efforts to ship innovative features for our SVOD and live-streaming service offerings.
Denney comes to Hulu from TiVo, where he was the Vice President of Product Management and Strategy. In this role, he was responsible for building a cohesive product plan and structure across TiVo businesses including metadata, discovery tools, analytics, and TiVo’s core user experience. During his tenure at TiVo, he led the launch of products ranging from DVRs and client devices to mobile and online experiences. These included innovations such as advanced discovery experiences, the ability to bring content on portable devices, and unifying over the top and pay TV content into one user UI. His contributions to the development of the TiVo experience garnered him a Primetime Emmy award for “Outstanding Achievement in Enhanced Television” from the Academy of Television Arts and Science in 2006.
Denney began his role last week and will be based in Hulu’s Santa Monica office.
As Vice President, Software Development, Billie Sue Chafins will continue to lead client development for Hulu. She is responsible for delivering and shipping the Hulu experience across all devices, ensuring viewers have a best-in-class, consistent experience. Additionally, as the Head of Hulu’s Seattle office, Chafins will now be the key executive on business decisions impacting the Seattle office and its operations and will serve as the company’s champion for recruiting in the city.
Prior to joining Hulu, Chafins spent 14 years at Microsoft, leading several teams responsible for products like Windows UX and Office. Before joining Microsoft, she was a lecturer at the University of Kentucky teaching computer science.