Who are Netflix's decision-makers?

Ted Sarandos started as a home-video distribution executive in Arizona before joining Netflix in 2000 as VP of Content. Over 24 years, he grew into the architect of Netflix's original content strategy — responsible for the commissioning decisions that created House of Cards, Squid Game, Stranger Things, and Wednesday, and for the $20B+ annual content budget that sustains them. He was named Co-CEO in July 2020, alongside then-CEO Reed Hastings, marking the first formal power-sharing arrangement in Netflix's history. Sarandos oversees all content, marketing, communications, and international content operations. His relationships with Hollywood studios, showrunners, and global talent agencies are central to Netflix's competitive differentiation.

Greg Peters joined Netflix in 2008 from TiVo, where he led business development. He holds a BS in physics and astrophysics from Yale. Peters drove Netflix's device partnership strategy in the consumer-electronics space, served as COO and Chief Product Officer before being named Co-CEO in January 2023 when Hastings stepped back. He owns product, engineering, advertising technology, and go-to-market strategy. Elizabeth Stone, named Chief Product and Technology Officer in February 2026, consolidates product and engineering under a single leader for the first time — she brings a data-science lens with a PhD in economics from Stanford and prior roles as VP of Science at Lyft and COO at Nuna. Spencer Neumann, CFO since January 2019, came from Activision Blizzard (where he was also CFO) and spent 20 years at The Walt Disney Company prior.

Netflix's procurement decisions depend heavily on product category. For engineering infrastructure and developer tools, the buying committee typically involves VPs of Engineering and Directors under Elizabeth Stone's CPTO organization, with significant influence from senior individual contributors before executive sign-off. Netflix's culture of freedom and responsibility gives senior individual contributors substantial tool-selection autonomy for smaller purchases (below approximately $50K annually); procurement gets involved as deal size scales.

For advertising technology and go-to-market platforms, Greg Peters' organization owns evaluation, with the VP of Advertising as a key stakeholder. Netflix's ad team is actively building its own programmatic stack, meaning external vendor evaluations in ad tech are competitive and technically rigorous — vendors must demonstrate capabilities that Netflix cannot build internally within a reasonable timeline. For content production services (VFX, post-production, rights management software), Ted Sarandos' content organization leads evaluation, with CFO involvement for large multi-year deals. Netflix's centralized procurement function (within the CFO org under Spencer Neumann) handles strategic vendor contracts; deals above approximately $250K require formal procurement engagement and executive sponsorship.

Netflix has historically maintained a flat, high-autonomy structure where senior individual contributors carry significant decision-making weight and management layers are deliberately minimized. The co-CEO model splits the company cleanly: content and creative (Sarandos) versus technology, product, and operations (Peters), with CFO Neumann providing financial governance across both. Reed Hastings' imminent board departure (June 2026) marks the end of founder influence and a full transition to professional management.

As Netflix expands into live events (NFL, WWE, boxing), advertising, and mobile gaming — all businesses with different operational rhythms than pure subscription streaming — the organization is adding functional leaders and operational depth. The VP of Advertising has grown in prominence under Peters as the ad-supported tier scales. The gaming business (Netflix Games, launched 2021) remains small, with approximately 80+ mobile titles available to subscribers, and is managed under the product organization. Headcount grew from approximately 14,000 in 2024 to 16,000 in 2025, signaling deliberate investment in live programming operations, ad sales, and international content production — categories that are more labor-intensive than software-driven subscription streaming.