Senior Manager, Software Engineering

At Disney Experiences Technology, our team creates world-class immersive digital experiences for the Company’s premier vacation brands including Disney’s Parks & Resorts worldwide, Disney Cruise Line, Aulani, A Disney Resort & Spa, and Disney Vacation Club.

 The Disney Experiences Technology team is responsible for the end-to-end digital and physical Guest experience for all technology & digital-led initiatives across the Attractions & Entertainment, Food & Beverage, Resorts & Transportation, and Merchandise lines of business as well as other initiatives including the MyDisneyExperience app and Hey, Disney!

We are responsible for the Theme Park arrival experience for all US domestic parks and Walt Disney World (WDW) Admission Entitlements. WDW Admission Entitlements underpin critical guest access to the largest theme park ecosystem in the Disney Experiences segment worldwide.

As Sr. Manager, Software Engineering – Entitlements, you will lead a high-performing engineering and operations team, ensuring robust, secure, and compliant platform operations, driving architectural and performance improvements, and delivering on the pipeline of strategic projects. You will lead the strategy, design, and delivery of a global entitlements capability that powers our guest experiences across the parks & resorts ecosystem. This platform will enable seamless recognition and redemption of entitlements across multiple lines of business, ensuring guests enjoy a unified and personalized experience throughout our connected ecosystem.

You will oversee a cross-functional team of product managers, architects, and engineers, collaborating with business stakeholders, operations, and technology partners to evolve our entitlement services into a scalable, vendor-agnostic capability that supports future innovations.

If selected for this role, you will report to the Director of Technology, Entitlements.

What You Will Do

Strategic Leadership

• Define and execute the multi-year roadmap for the Entitlement Platform, aligned with company-wide digital commerce and guest experience goals.
• Manage an engineering team responsible for analyzing, designing, programming, debugging, and enhancing software solutions used in various computing environments.
• Supervise delivery optimization of large-scale or sophisticated software programs and systems, collaborating cross-functionally to align with business goals and timelines.
• Drive the rationalization of all one-off and disparate entitlement solutions within the segment towards a reusable, enterprise-grade entitlement capability.
• Partner with segment technology teams to ensure consistent entitlement handling across different lines of business.

Delivery & Execution

• AI First: Drive integration of AI-driven solutions for entitlement and required software engineering.
• Lead cross-functional planning, prioritization, and delivery of entitlement services, APIs, and tools.
• Provide strategic and operational leadership for the platform, ensuring 24x7 sustainment, platform hygiene, compliance (PCI/SOX), and ongoing security.
• Oversee platform integrations with commerce, other DX enterprise capabilities.

Team & Vendor Management

• Build and lead a high-performing team, fostering collaboration and technical excellence.
• Manage vendor relationships, contracts, and service delivery to ensure business continuity and cost efficiency.
• Partner with enterprise architecture, platform engineering, and infrastructure teams on design and deployment.
• Manage team performance, talent development, and succession planning to ensure long-term organizational capability.

Innovation & Continuous Improvement

• Proactively find opportunities for technology optimization and efficiency improvements, driving innovation and scalability.
• Champion reusability and interoperability through shared capabilities and APIs.
• Identify opportunities to enhance guest personalization through entitlements data and analytics.
• Drive operational efficiencies through automation, self-service tools, and modern entitlement management practices.
• Craft and build a roadmap for delivering a world-class support model and ensure ongoing health and performance of technology solutions.
• Review, augment, and build critical metrics for responsible systems, using visualization tools.
• Engage in estimation and planning across the organization, voicing recommendations, feedback, and solutions from a technical perspective and aligning to the overall project goals to deliver on-time & in-scope.
• Proactively track and assess emerging technologies across the industry to inform strategic decision-making and recommendations.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• Minimum 10 years of related work experience with demonstrated experience in Software Engineering Technical Design, Software Engineering Technical Delivery, and Software Engineering Management
• Familiarity with generative AI concepts, Hands-on experience with AI frameworks, and experience leveraging AI in software engineering practice.
• Intimately familiar with Azure and AWS cloud technologies.
• Hands on knowledge of Splunk queries and dashboard creation.
• Hands on knowledge of DevOps tool chain such as Git, Jenkins/Harness, Nexus, Docker, Kubernetes etc.
• Able to monitor, and diagnose cloud services and SaaS applications.
• Experience with scripting technologies and modern programming languages such as Java.
• Demonstrated experience in design, development, and implementation of highly scalable, high-volume systems and components and in organizations practicing Agile best practices
• Budget and Forecast Management
• Executive Written & Verbal Communication Skills
• A comfort with public speaking, delivering engaging and informative presentations and the ability to adapt to different audiences and event types (ie: executives, technical individuals, and forums/communities both internal and external)
• Proven experience in large scale project delivery.
• Demonstrated ability to think strategically and align IT initiatives with long-term business goals.
• Experience leading and developing a team of software engineers.
• Strong analytical skills with experience in assessing security risks and managing technical debt.
• Expertise in developing and governing technology standards, roadmaps, and heatmaps.
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence and collaborate with senior business and IT leaders.
• Familiarity with hybrid organizational structures involving centralized and decentralized teams.

Education

• Bachelor's or foreign equivalent Degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience

Additional Information

• Position is in Orlando, Florida

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