Paramount Streaming is home to popular content—but that content would not be possible without the technology that helps bring it to consumers. Vibol Hou is the person in charge of that technology.

Hou, EVP & CTO at Paramount Streaming and CTO at Pluto TV, has been enthusiastic about tech since the age of nine, when he disassembled his first computer to see how it functioned firsthand.

“The computer was the size of a small refrigerator, so the task was a bit dangerous,” explains Hou. “Inside there was all this electrical equipment that actually could have given me a pretty good shock if I touched the wrong thing. Fortunately, it didn't. I'm still here.” His passion evolved into a more than 20-year career as a leader in the product and engineering space.

Hou has worked as a consultant, architect, and software engineer—all of which inform his approach to his current role overseeing the development and management of Paramount Global’s streaming products. That includes Paramount+ and the leading FAST platform Pluto TV, as well as the immense infrastructure that supports both.

Since taking over as Paramount Streaming’s CTO in 2021, Hou has run a team of roughly 2000 software engineers, data engineers, architects, and experts in video streaming, machine learning, cyber-security, cloud operations and other technical areas. His focus for Paramount Streaming is on scaling and enriching the streaming product experience for consumers of Paramount content.

Kelby Clark: How has your focus evolved since stepping into the role of EVP & CTO at Paramount Streaming?

Vibol Hou: My passion is solving tough problems. In my current role, there are new challenges everyday and they expand far beyond just technology in order to solve them—it relies on people, information sharing, and investing in the process. This role gives me an opportunity to take all of my experiences and my ideas about problem-solving, operations, and culture and channel them to make Paramount Streaming tech the best it can possibly be. I’m constantly partnering with several teams and executives across the company to ensure everyone has the right information and the most up-to-date knowledge of what’s going on in our technology and the industry to drive our business forward.

In addition, I’m always focused on making sure my team is the most capable out there and my division is the ultimate and most enjoyable place to work. As a division, we're setting the stage for our streaming products to be number one in the world, which means we need an incredible team that’s passionate about innovation and razor sharp when it comes to execution. Right now, my goal is making sure we are hyper focused on investing in our people as much as we are investing in managing and developing Paramount’s tech.

KC: What’s on the roadmap for both Paramount+ and Pluto TV as we head into 2023?

VH: A large portion of our focus is on enhancing our experiences. We want to continue to iterate, improve, and roll out new features that help our viewers get closer to the content. We're looking for a variety of ways to have our viewers come back to us more often. At the same time, our products are experiencing rapid growth and in order to maintain that momentum, we also need to scale up our technologies. These engagement elements are directly supportive of both retaining customers while also attracting new customers and looking for new opportunities and new markets for expansion. We’re always making sure that all of our platforms are as stable as possible. There are 72M Pluto TV subscribers and 46M Paramount+ subscribers globally. That's a lot of viewers to keep happy. I believe we’re building a utility, something that never fails and is always available to our audience. That's not an easy thing to do. We will continue to invest in how we operationalize all of our systems and how we scale those systems globally.

KC: Speaking of global expansion, tell me about how your team supports the rollout of our services globally. Does the technology behind our services differ in each market?

VH: As we scale, we want to do it efficiently. We aim to build tools and features that are so solid that we don’t have to rebuild and can instead focus on scaling on a global level. But different markets ask for different things. With Paramount+ specifically, we have partnerships with local MVPDs, as well as uniquely structured-hard bundles and soft-bundles, among other things. Those offerings require additional work for integration. For example, our recent deal with Walmart+ required that we have a special integration with Walmart+ so that their subscribers can sign up and create a Paramount+ account seamlessly. Looking forward, what we really want to do is have Paramount+ be a global service that is consistent product-wise across all markets, even if the content is varied, similar to Pluto TV. By operating in that way, we reduce the amount of time we have to spend doing custom work in our application.

KC: Walk me through your career to date. What was your first professional role?

VH: When I got out of college, I had two job offers in hand, one from Yahoo and one from a startup, stimTV. I went to work for stimTV; it was a small team at a small company and I felt like I could make a lot more happen. At the time, they were trying to build a video discovery platform and the tech we created ended up winning a Technology & Engineering Emmy. After that role, I did a stint at a company called Demand Media, where I was tasked with leading a small team to rebuild the entire eHow product from the ground up.

By the time I left eHow, I had so much experience with building products that I began consulting, supporting a number of startups, helping them solve their problems, and connecting them with development teams. A former client of mine reached out about a company that needed some help launching their product and the day I started I learned the company’s CTO quit. The company was Pluto TV. What was supposed to be a few days' engagement ended up being me working with the small team at Pluto TV to get their technology in shape for launch. Around the same time, I was approached with an offer to join the company and I accepted the role as CTO. When Pluto TV became part of the Paramount family and Paramount later launched Paramount+, I stepped into the role of CTO for the company’s entire Streaming division where I currently reside.

KC: What qualities are you looking for in potential hires as you grow and scale your team?

VH: I’m looking for people who are incredibly curious. Innate curiosity with no ego is the key to finding and solving problems. You don't have to be an expert in the field to have a desire to want to fix something. Now that streaming technologies are in the place where they have excellent video quality, exceptional audio, and the necessary internet bandwidth supporting them, we are now focused on our differentiators in an ever-evolving space.

We need to keep thinking about innovating our experiences and making our products even more engaging so our audiences consistently come back to us and enjoy our services. More recently, we have started brainstorming around the future of entertainment as we tie content, technology, and experiences together to figure out what's next. We are in a position where we can innovate our pathway to where the consumer wants to be. Is that place a mix of reality, AR, and VR? Is it more about how we tie our products, services, consumer products, and experiences together? We might not fully know yet, but it is the people who are curious and hungry to solve problems who will find out—and that’s who we want on our team.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.