Senior Media Streaming 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.

Would you love to be at the forefront of shaping the future of video streaming technology?

As a Senior Media Streaming Engineer at Disney, you will be part of the Media Engineering Solutions team, which is responsible for defining processes, managing project expectations, leading hardware buildouts, delivery capacity planning and insights for the Media Experience department. The department is responsible for the entire audio and video encoding supply chain from content acquisition to delivery, consisting of an agile and responsive team of technicians that perform the daily processes and procedures of our live and on-demand video streaming products, as well as performance insights and operational support for those products on an ongoing basis.

You would join a diverse and networked team that collaborates on initiatives that drive streaming video technology to the next level. What makes us different from other media streaming groups? We use innovation and technical experience to transform projects into experiences that can directly impact the happiness of our Subscribers.

This is a lead contributor position on the Media Engineering Solutions team, a small team of engineers responsible for developing creative solutions for the processes that define work across the live and on-demand digital supply chain, as well as supporting the Media Engineering teams in managing our encoder hardware footprint and providing insights on health and success of our products. It is an excellent opportunity for someone looking to grow their career in the streaming space working in a dynamic, fast-paced, and sophisticated technical environment.

You will be leading multiple cross-departmental initiatives that drive expansion to our digital products. You will be a main contributor to developing capacity planning (physical footprint or delivery capacity), determining strategic approaches for multiple company-wide initiatives, and providing insight into cost savings or other metrics for success.  The ideal candidate would have a background in both project management and media technology. The ideal candidate must also have strong troubleshooting skills within the video streaming ecosystem across all of our products and a creative approach to problem solving.

Every single day is different! On any one day you might:

• Determine a strategy for resourcing hardware across one of our several datacenters globally
• Lead teams as a subject matter expert on agile efficiency, support their self-organization and agile methodology knowledge growth.
• Development support tools, scripts & dashboards
• Develop an out of band solution to address gaps in media tooling that is easy for the rest of the department to adopt at scale
• Lead the execution of projects that support ever changing workflows and requirements, typically more than 3-4 projects at once
• Run internal scrum ceremonies and cross-team communication
• Troubleshoot encoding and segmentation issues.
• Analyze and report on project health and success, including potential cost savings
• Determine risks and mitigation path for projects as they are in flight
• Provide training to internal team members.
• Documentation of workflows and standard operational procedures
• Provide external teams with guidance related to encoder/packaging workflows.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• 5 or more years of progressively complex related experience.
• Bachelor’s Degree in a related field
• Advanced knowledge of Jira/Confluence supporting agile methodologies.
• Experience working in a video OTT/broadcast environment.
• Anticipate working with teams on East or West Coast hours, with flexibility to work outside of regular office hours to accommodate important meetings in different time zones.
• Comfortable acting as a technical resource to other departments to address and resolve problems
• Ability to work independently to solve problems in both the video and IT domains
• Knowledge of video and audio codecs and compression a plus
• Strong communication skills and ability to identify and communicate critical risks early and efficiently
• Experience writing technical documentation for consumption by both technical and non-technical people.

The hiring range for this position in New York, NY is $120,300 to $161,300 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.