Senior Manager, Media Systems Engineering

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.

Job Summary:

Disney Media Systems Engineers have a clear charter: to transform the capability and flexibility of how Disney acquires, produces, and distributes content worldwide, all while ensuring the highest levels of quality, efficiency, and resiliency.

Disney Media Systems Engineers are subject matter experts on complex and multifaceted disciplines which require a deep knowledge of hardware and software-based technologies. Individuals in these roles must possess a comprehensive theoretical and practical understanding of the technology that powers the generation, monetization, and distribution of all forms of consumer- facing linear and digital video/audio content. The team is responsible for the oversight of numerous systems such as Playout Technology, Studios, Production Control Rooms, Remote Production, Post-Production, Contribution/Distribution Systems, Networking, Cloud Compute, Production Software and Virtual Environment and more.

The Sr Manager Media Systems Engineer acts as a technical leader and is responsible for working with engineers to architect solutions to business/stakeholder requests. This individual will also work closely with management, Executive Leadership, and key stakeholders to gather infrastructure requirements and holds the accountability for influencing the advancement of Disney’s technical posture and approach. This includes being accountable for the strategy and implementation of our core technology, as well as defining and directing the strategic vision and roadmap for the technological framework across key locations.

The Sr Manager Media Systems Engineer will work with vendors and industry trade organizations to define and evolve industry standards that impact on our business. The Sr Manager Media Solutions Engineer will work collaboratively with engineers and architects to lead all aspects of the design and building of Disney’s most impactful projects and will leverage their experience to create policies, procedures, and standards that drive all our technological development.

Responsibilities:

• Responsible and lead a team of engineers to modernize Disney legacy media production infrastructure systems through the identification of new technological innovations and advancements within the industry. (i.e., SMPTE ST 2110, 4K, UHD, HDR, JPEG-XS, NDI, ProRes Raw, H.265, AV1, metadata conversion, audio mapping, system outages, microservices architecture tunning and related technical problems.
• Own, lead and manage the planning and executing of on-prem and cloud-based broadcast production and infrastructure projects that support, conditioning, monitoring, routing infrastructure and distribution between and throughout all facilities for content ingest and network distribution (linear, digital, and streaming platforms).
• Direct, manage a team of senior engineers to architect, design, document and implement media technology environments and construction of facilities that are aligned with industry standards for innovation, which allow DE&E Technology the ability to acquire, produce, store, stream, and distribute our content across all infrastructure.
• Lead and work closely with engineering services and operations management and various internal teams to gather requirements and develop broad-scale solutions based on broadcast facility’s needs, production workflows. Implement new cutting-edge technologies and define areas of innovation opportunity. Drive the overall investigative strategy to bring synergy and efficiency across Disney facilities and our overall broadcast ecosystem.
• Partner with our Portfolio and finance teams on project capital planning and forecasting, estimations, dependencies, business value/justification, synergy.  and prioritization of work. Develop project plans, schedules

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s of Master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience
• Minimum of 8 years of related work experience
• Strong understanding of baseband/IP video, audio and digital compression, transport systems, audio/video encoding/transcoding techniques, transfer acceleration systems and formats

Preferred Qualifications

• Minimum of 8 years of demonstrated and relevant experience in leading others, managing on-air broadcast facilities, developing technical strategies ensuring efficient design/build, uptime, and overall stability of the technical environments of live media production and distribution
• Proficient with technologies like microservices, DevOps tools, design principles, practices, standards, and guidelines
•  Expert level knowledge and experience with on-prem and cloud-based storage and compute infrastructure platforms and current technological offerings. (Virtual machines, docker containers)
• File-based workflows like enterprise Media Asset Management systems (Cloud-based Cloud Compute or Local Network-based) including storage, compute, encode and distribution
• Proficient with software development, scripting, and integration with 3rd party services via api.  Experience with Java, servlets, web applications, Oracle SQL Experience (PL/SQL), MySQL experience is preferred
• Expert level knowledge and experience with compression techniques such as MPEG2/4, HEVC, JPEG 2000, and JPEG XS
• Working knowledge of DNS, DHCP, TCP/IP, HTTP, UDP, SSL, and SNMP
• Proficiency in AutoCAD
• Expert knowledge in standards for broadcast television and video production/streaming environments with a current certification such as not limited to ST 292M, ST 424M, ST 2110, ST 2059, IEE1588, ST 2022-7, SCTE-104, NMOS IS-04, 05, etc.

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