OTT Streaming API Platform

A subscription-aware streaming backend that scales with the catalog.

110ms

p95 latency

−92%

Publish cycle

12k

Concurrent streams

Overview

A streaming-grade backend for a regional OTT service: tiered subscriptions, role-based access, secure content delivery, and a content pipeline that survives messy catalog updates.

The problem

The team had outgrown a CMS-stitched MVP. Subscription edge cases, role conflicts, and an unreliable ingest pipeline were costing them weekend incidents and a slow editorial workflow.

Approach

01
Modeled the subscription state machine explicitly — trial, active, grace, paused, expired — with idempotent transitions driven by webhooks.
02
Separated identity from entitlement so the same user could carry household, regional, and promotional rights without conflict.
03
Built a queued ingest pipeline with content versioning, transcoding hooks, and a staging tier the editorial team could preview before publish.

Outcome

p95 API latency dropped from 480ms to 110ms on the entitlement check path.
Catalog publish cycle moved from same-day to under 20 minutes end to end.
Zero subscription-state incidents across the first three billing cycles after launch.