Senior Systems Engineer

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Technology’s mission (DEE Tech) is to delight consumers worldwide with the news, entertainment, and sports content they want most, with more choice, personalization, and convenience than ever before.

Comprised of Disney’s international media businesses and the Company’s streaming and linear services, the DEET Engineering Services segment aligns technology, content, and distribution platforms to expand the Company’s global footprint to deliver world-class, personalized entertainment experiences to consumers around the world.

DEET is responsible for The Walt Disney Company’s direct-to-consumer businesses globally, including the ESPN+ sports streaming service, programmed in conjunction with ESPN; Disney+, the Disney-branded direct-to-consumer streaming service; global advertising sales and ad technology for all of Disney’s media properties, including ABC, ESPN, Freeform, FX Networks, National Geographic, and the Disney Channels; HotStar, the leading over-the-top streaming service in India; and the Company’s majority ownership stake in Hulu.

Job Summary:

Infrastructure Engineering Transport Services provide media transport solutions, content origin and distribution services, workflow integration and media orchestration across hybrid cloud environments for Disney Entertainment and ESPN.  We are seeking a Sr. Systems Engineer to be a key contributor to our Content Origin Services engineering team.  This team is responsible for the architecture, integration, provisioning and sustainment of global origin, mid-tier/caching and CDN/edge infrastructure for Disney’s Streaming properties (Hulu, Disney+, ESPN+).  This ensures consistent content flow at the highest levels of quality, resiliency and efficiency. It is a great role for a proactive, collaborative, and enthusiastic engineer who is interested in directly contributing to the development and growth of Disney’s innovative global streaming ecosystem.  

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Architect, deploy and provision content delivery infrastructure.

• Conduct business and operational requirements gathering, provide detailed analysis and prescribe customizable technical solutions that are cost effective, scalable and extensible. 
• Lead proof-of-concept initiatives and the development of roadmaps that will enable implementation of new products, features and associated technologies along with more efficient ways to deliver services in response to changing business needs.
• Assist in training and evaluation of technical staff.
• Assist in the development of technology roadmaps and long-range planning to enhance content delivery capabilities.
• Develop and implement service monitoring tools and metrics that will identify and address performance issues and system bottlenecks before they impact content workflows and clients. 
• Provide service sustainment, operational and technical support through software/hardware upgrades, service monitoring, troubleshooting and interoperability with 3rd party, vendor supplied solutions and products. 
• Engage and collaborate with technical and business stakeholders while providing insight into emerging technologies, architectures and methodologies that meet business objectives.
• Participate in a rotating on-call schedule.
• Collaborate with multiple teams on interconnected deliverables.

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Minimum qualifications

• 5+ years of Linux systems administration experience
• BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent field
• Strong communication and documentation skills
• Strong experience with HTTP webserving and content delivery.
• Apache, NGINX, or Varnish webserver applications
• Other caching solutions within a CDN environmental context.
• Familiarity with complex network topology, including but not limited to Anycast, BGP, high-availability, Forward- and reverse- proxying
• Comfortable with Infrastructure-as-Code tools such as Ansible, Git, Salt, etc.
• Proficiency with at least one interpreted (e.g. Bash, Python) or compiled (e.g. Go, Rust) language.
• Solid understanding of web security protocols (TLS, SSL)
• Previous support for hybrid public/private environments.

Preferred qualifications

• Strong understanding of virtualization technologies
• Experience with enterprise grade hardware & storage

The hiring range for this position in New York, NY is $120,300.00 to $161,300.00 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.