Principal Solutions Engineer

Technology is at the heart of Disney’s past, present, and future. Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is a global organization of engineers, product developers, designers, technologists, data scientists, and more – all working to build and advance the technological backbone for Disney’s media business globally.

The team marries technology with creativity to build world-class products, enhance storytelling, and drive velocity, innovation, and scalability for our businesses. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers. We work with every part of The Walt Disney Company’s media portfolio to advance the technological foundation and consumer media touch points serving millions of people around the world. 

Here are a few reasons why we think you’d love working here:

• Building the future of Disney’s media: Our Technologists are designing and building the products and platforms that will power our media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.
• Reach, Scale & Impact: More than ever, Disney’s technology and products serve as a signature doorway for fans' connections with the company’s brands and stories. Disney+. Hulu. ESPN. ABC. ABC News…and many more. These products and brands – and the unmatched stories, storytellers, and events they carry – matter to millions of people globally. 
• Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms, and solve complex and distinctive technical problems.

Ad Platforms is responsible for Disney’s industry-leading ad technology and products – driving advertising performance, innovation, and value in Disney’s sports, news, and entertainment content, across all media platforms.

The Principal Solutions Engineer will own the operations of ad technology products. This role will partner closely with leaders and teams across product, engineering, business and sales to provide technical expertise, leadership, and strategic direction to achieve business objectives. This position requires a deep technical understanding of our products and services, combined with excellent communication and leadership skills to effectively collaborate with both the sales and technical teams.  This person must be able to balance long-term strategy with short-term results, focused on execution in a fast-paced environment. Experience managing cross-functional projects is a must.

Responsibilities 

• Define and implement robust monitoring and alerting practices, ensuring that teams have timely and actionable insights into system performance and issues
• Facilitate operational improvements which streamline processes, leverage automation, eliminate inefficiencies and enable scale
• Prepare regular reports on production performance, including key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics to senior management for strategic decision-making
• Drive a close engagement with Engineering and Product teams to address concerns around critical issue processes, response times/problem resolution, establishing SLAs 
• Actively monitor, measure and optimize the existing production sites, products and pipelines – working to proactively remediate potential breakage before it happens
• Establish and maintain incident response processes, including incident escalation procedures, post-incident reviews, and incident management tooling
• Identify gaps, show initiative, and take ownership to build out programs and processes in support of the Technical Operations Team
• Coach team members to promote proactive diagnostic techniques; guiding customers toward self-serve support option
• Keep informed of product plans and participate in product development lifecycle of
• Help to drive forward our localization strategies, ensuring our teams are prepared to scale globally
• Define, implement, and report on key performance metrics for issues/incidents, surfacing meaningful insights to our broader Product and Engineering organizations and cross functional partners
• Monitoring vendor performance against agreed-upon SLAs and KPIs, ensuring adherence to contractual obligations
• Conduct regular audits to identify areas for improvement and implement corrective actions
• Identify potential risks and develop risk mitigation strategies to minimize the impact on production operations

Basic Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in ad technology, operations, or support, preferably with focus in video advertising technology
• Bachelor’s degree in relevant field of study; and/or equivalent work experience
• Advanced understanding of business analysis techniques, advertising/media models and processes
• Experience delivering products in an agile software development environment including sprint work in Jira
• Adept at identifying and evaluating risks for client programs and products. Strong track record of implementing solutions with demonstrated outcomes
• Knowledge of software development process and technical skills
• Demonstrable skill and comfortability communicating with stakeholders such as engineers, management, clients, and vendors. A strong translator in conveying technical language in non-technical terms
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making abilities, with a proactive approach to identifying and resolving issues

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in California is $167,700 to $224,900 per year and in NYC/Seattle is $175,800 to $235,700 per year. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate’s geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.