Lead Systems 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.

Product Engineering

• Product Engineering is a unified team responsible for the engineering of Disney Entertainment & ESPN digital and streaming products and platforms. This includes product engineering, media engineering, quality assurance, engineering behind personalization, commerce, lifecycle, and identity.

Responsibilities

• Work with a team of engineers to build high-performance, stable, scalable systems to be deployed in an enterprise setting
• Lead high-level architecture discussions and planning sessions; author and share feedback on technical proposals and root cause analyses
• Work cross-team to build consensus on approach for delivering projects; eliminate ambiguity in projects and communicate direction to engineers to help team members work in parallel; provide mentoring and advice for other engineers
• Talk to business partners to understand and refine requirements
• Participate in the on-call rotation, supporting systems and services during production incidents
• Establish standards within the team to drive quality and excellence
• Lead proof-of-concept initiatives and the development of roadmaps that will enable implementation of new products, features and associated technologies along with more efficient ways to deliver services in response to changing business needs.
• Assist in the development of technology roadmaps and long-range planning to enhance content delivery capabilities.
• Develop and implement service monitoring tools and metrics that will identify and address performance issues and system bottlenecks before they impact content workflows and clients.
• Provide service sustainment, operational and technical support through software/hardware upgrades, service monitoring, troubleshooting and interoperability with 3rd party, vendor supplied solutions and products.
• Engage and collaborate with technical and business stakeholders while providing insight into emerging technologies, architectures and methodologies that meet business objectives.
• Participate in a rotating on-call schedule.
• Collaborate with multiple teams on interconnected deliverables.

Minimum qualifications

• 7+ years of Linux systems administration experience
• Strong Knowledge of HTTP,  DNS and overall Networking
• BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent field
• Strong communication and documentation skills
• Strong experience with HTTP webserving and content delivery.
• Apache, NGINX, or Varnish webserver applications
• Other caching solutions within a CDN environmental context.
• Familiarity with complex network topology, including but not limited to Anycast, BGP, high-availability, Forward- and reverse- proxying
• Comfortable with Infrastructure-as-Code tools such as Ansible, Git, Salt, etc.
• Proficiency with at least one interpreted (e.g. Bash, Python) or compiled (e.g. Go, Rust) language.
• Solid understanding of web security protocols (TLS, SSL)
• Previous support for hybrid public/private environments.

Preferred qualifications

• Strong understanding of virtualization and hardware technologies
• Experience with enterprise grade hardware & storage

The hiring range for this position in Seattle, WA and in New York City, NY is $132,500 to $177,600 per year; the hiring range for this position in Santa Monica/Burbank/Glendale/L.A., California and in Bristol, Connecticut is $126,400 to $169,500; the hiring range for this position in San Francisco is $138,500 to $185,600; and the hiring range for this position in North Carolina/Orlando/The Woodlands is $120,400 to $161,400 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.