Sr Mgr Product Software Engineering

About the role

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology

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 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.

Job Summary

As a Senior Software Engineering Manager within the Experimentation & Experience Controls team, you will be leading a team of engineering leads, and the individual contributors that make up the squads within your team. You will be responsible for setting the direction of multiple domains within the WeaponX product, and ensuring successful delivery across agile squads delivering global distributed systems. As part of your role, you will instill a culture of collaboration within the team, keeping them motivated with a commitment to continuous learning and improvement.

You will be empowered to set technical and architectural direction, and to influence the roadmap for your squads and the wider organisation - working in partnership with your peers across Product, Project Management and Engineering. You will collaboratively define the team’s OKRs, and ensure our work has a measurable impact on these objectives.

You’ll be working on our high-scale in-house A/B testing and Feature Flagging product, capable of serving millions of concurrent requests with single digit millisecond response times. Deeply integrated into our platform to enable experimentation, feature, & release management, and real-time user targeting across every aspect of Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology (DEET).

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Think about the strategic business goals of the organisation, define OKRs, and work to ensure your team’s direction aligns with those goals.
• Lead and mentor multiple leaders, who are each responsible for their own teams and domains. Working alongside your team to maintain an understanding of the technical and architectural problems they are facing.
• Build a diverse software development team through training, career development, recruiting, and process improvements. Creating an inclusive environment where people can do their best work.
• Work directly with Business stakeholders and Product Owners to discover business requirements, both functional and nonfunctional.
• Lead agile squads that are fully responsible for delivering critical global products or services, driving innovation and collaboration within the team.

• Define and communicate the roadmap and engineering vision for your team. Working in partnership with your peers across Product, Project Management, and Engineering to ensure alignment with the strategic goals of the organisation.

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Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience.
• At least 10 years of experience in the software engineering field
• At least 3 year of experiences in a leadership or management role in technology
• Experience as a manager of managers, leading agile teams responsible for the delivery of large scale distributed systems.
• A preference for delegating and empowering your team, but with the ability to be hands on when required.
• Understanding of high-quality coding, testing, and development practices.
• Experience in a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) language such as: Java, Scala, or Kotlin.
• Familiarity with at least one of the following cloud providers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Compute (GCP), or Microsoft Azure.
• Comfort working with ambiguous requirements and leading conversations where discordant views are present.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building micro/web services - including REST and GraphQL.
• Experience or interest in functional programming and its real-world applications - particularly Scala stacks such as Cats Effect and ZIO.
• Experience with relational and NoSQL databases, particularly PostgreSQL, Aurora, & DynamoDB with experience modelling & optimising query performance.
• Experience with Kinesis, Kafka, or any other streaming data.
• Familiarity with data warehouse, pipeline, and analytics platforms such as Databricks or Snowflake.
• Excellent communication skills, specifically in understanding, framing and simplifying both technical & business requirements.
• Experience mentoring and coaching more junior engineers on both technical and soft skills.
• Contributions to the technical community, either through blogs, internal workshops, meetups or conferences.

PAY TRANSPARENCY

The hiring range for this position in New York City is $200,400- $268,700 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.

This position is with Disney Entertainment & Sports LLC, which is part of a business we call Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology.

To learn more about Disney's guidelines on the use of AI for candidates, click here.

Disney Entertainment & Sports LLC is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Disney champions a business environment where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best stories and be relevant in a constantly evolving world.

DISABILITY ACCOMMODATION FOR EMPLOYMENT APPLICATIONS

The Walt Disney Company and its Affiliated Companies are Equal Employment Opportunity employers and welcome all job seekers including individuals with disabilities and veterans with disabilities. If you have a disability and believe you need a reasonable accommodation in order to search for a job opening or apply for a position, visit the Disney candidate disability accommodations FAQs. We will only respond to those requests that are related to the accessibility of the online application system due to a disability.

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