Sr. Manager, Software Engineering

BUILD SOMETHING BIGGER THAN YOURSELF 

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise with the following business segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, Disney Parks, and Experiences and Products. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family. Disney’s stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.

How will you contribute to our magical experience?: 

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.

We are seeking a seasoned and strategic Sr Manager of Software Engineering to lead a high-performing development team. This role is ideal for a technical leader who thrives on fostering engineering excellence, driving testing and observability standards, and guiding architectural evolution across systems.

The Sr. Manager, Media Engineering will be responsible for: 

• Drive best practices in unit, load, penetration, and automation testing. Identify gaps in testing coverage and implement scalable solutions and frameworks to optimize quality across systems.
• Demonstrate proficiency in debugging across systems and services, regardless of ownership. Share best practices and mentor both the team and its stakeholders.
• Foster a culture of observability across teams. Use operational data to improve system stability, performance, and end-to-end reliability.
• Guide the adoption of effective tools and enforce consistency in documentation and style guides across services and programming languages. Ensure all system documentation is current and comprehensive.
• Understand and evolve the team’s software architecture. Introduce tools that enhance developer productivity and make forward-looking design decisions to reduce future technical debt. Lead architectural initiatives across teams and advocate for technology-driven improvements.

What we need from you to be part of this story:

• +6-7 years of engineering management experience, including managing managers and growing teams
• Advanced level of English.
• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical, or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience. Master's or higher degree in a related field is a plus.
• Ability to attract and grow a local team, selecting and training to ensure the right skillsets and capabilities.
• Experience building a development center from the ground-up.
• Experience in media streaming technologies, especially media processing workflows and tooling, media players and devices, and content delivery strategies.
• Experience with both high-scale back-end services (cloud and datacenter) along with client development on a variety of devices (mobile, web, living room devices).
• Experience with Media Operations and/or Infrastructure management.
• Experience using outside firms for training, sourcing, and team development to shorten lead-times and improve effectiveness.
• Experience leading globally connected teams with a variety of stakeholders
• Familiarity with managing projects, ideally with 5 years of experience implementing cross-functional initiatives.
• Partner with local leadership to ensure strong alignment with the needs of Disney LATAM business leadership.
• Possess a vision for exceptional escalation management and engineering excellence.
• Ability to develop and implement strategies and tactics to drive improvement in collaboration, team capability, and operational efficiency.
• Knowledge of how to use data to understand and improve business performance.
• Passion for developing teams, with a focus on continuous learning.
• Track record of developing strong cross-functional and cross-regional relationships.
• This position requires some international travel.

Additional Information: 

At Disney, we believe it takes great people to create the memorable experiences, products and services our consumers know and love. We are a team of storytellers and hire under equal opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, disability and gender identity. We foster a corporate culture of belonging and inclusiveness, which empowers our staff and company to thrive. At Disney, everyone has the opportunity to speak up and participate, grow and share ideas.

“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” Walt Disney