Apple has reportedly hired a longtime Netflix engineer as the company seeks to build out and improve its fledgling streaming video service, Apple TV+.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Ruslan Meshenberg, who previously served in several roles at Netflix, joined Apple this month to help address any technical issues that could arise as the platform scales. Meshenberg’s LinkedIn page seemingly confirms the hire and lists his position with Apple as engineering leader.
Meshenberg most recently served as vice president of productivity engineering at Netflix where he focused on accelerating productivity among engineers at the streaming service. For more than six years he worked as the director of cloud platform engineering at Netflix. In that position, he worked on core libraries and services; data tier; data aggregation; publishing and low-latency access at web-scale; secure crypto and key management services for other applications; and a data pipeline that publishes, collects, aggregates, processes and moves events, according to his LinkedIn page.
RELATED: Apple TV+ revenue still ‘immaterial’ to Apple’s results
Apple has made other significant hires for its Apple TV+ service this month including former HBO chief Richard Plepler, who signed an exclusive production deal with the service.
Apple TV+ launched on November 1 priced at $4.99 per month, but customers who purchase new iPhones, iPads or Apple TVs get one year of the service for free.
Ampere Analysis estimated Apple TV+’s subscriber count for the fourth quarter totaled 33.6 million, enough to make it the third-largest SVOD in the U.S. behind Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. However, the service has yet to become a significant contributor to Apple’s growing focus on service revenues. During the company’s fiscal first-quarter earnings call this week, CFO Luca Maestri said Apple TV+ revenue has thus far been “immaterial” to the company’s results.