Principal Media Streaming Engineer

About the role

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.

Responsibilities

• Drive initiatives to improve the reliability, scalability, and performance of VOD processing and the platform experience.
• Partner with development teams on feature requests, system optimizations, and architectural improvements.
• Lead proof-of-concept projects and technology evaluations to inform strategic decisions.
• Design and develop dashboards, reporting tools, and data visualization solutions that provide actionable insights into encoding throughput, error rates, and operational KPIs.
• Partner with stakeholders to define key metrics and translate business requirements into technical reporting solutions.
• Maintain and enhance existing reporting infrastructure to ensure accuracy and reliability.
• Develop automation solutions that augment and streamline day-to-day operational workflows, reducing manual intervention and improving efficiency.
• Implement monitoring, alerting, and auto-remediation systems for VOD processing infrastructure.
• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to team members.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including Product, Engineering, and Operations to align on priorities and deliverables.
• Document workflows, standard operating procedures, and technical specifications.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 10 years of progressively complex related experience
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent work experience
• Experience designing and building VOD processing and encoding workflows
• Experience working with on-prem and cloud-based transcoding and encoding solutions
• Ability to work independently to solve problems in both the video and IT domains
• Deep knowledge of video codecs and compression (H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, AV1)
• Knowledge of audio codecs and containers (AAC, PCM, AC-3, EAC-3, Dolby Atmos)
• Strong to advanced experience with command-line video tools like FFMPEG, MP4Box, and MediaInfo
• Extensive knowledge of ABR/OTT technologies (HLS, DASH, CMAF)
• Expert understanding of video fundamentals (resolution, frame rates, color spaces, HDR)
• Comfortable with Mac, Linux, and Windows environments, specifically on the command line
• Strong communication skills
• Advanced scripting experience (Python, BASH, Ruby)
• Experience building automation tools, dashboards, and reporting systems
• Experience with REST API communication, preferably programmatically (through a scripting language library)
• Experience writing technical documentation for consumption by both technical and non-technical people
• Experience with data visualization and metrics platforms (Grafana, Datadog or similar)
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Comfortable acting as a technical lead

Benefits

Base pay range for this position varies by location: New York, NY - $163,100 to $218,700, Santa Monica, CA - $155,700 to $208,700, San Francisco, CA - $170,500 to $228,600 per year. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and 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.

About Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology

At Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology, we’re blending imagination and innovation to reimagine the ways people experience and engage with the world’s most beloved stories and products. Our work is wide-ranging and deeply sophisticated. We create amazing experiences, transform the future of media, and build products and platforms that enable the connection between people everywhere and the stories and sports they love.

About The Walt Disney Company

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise that includes three core business segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Experiences. 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.