Description
Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology is seeking an experienced Software Engineering Manager to lead the JavaScript-based Disney Media Player experience across web and connected-device surfaces.
The ideal candidate is a pragmatic engineering leader who creates clarity in ambiguous environments, communicates effectively with technical and non-technical partners, and builds a culture grounded in accountability, inclusion, operational discipline, and continuous learning.
Responsibilities:
- Lead and grow the JavaScript Disney Media Player engineering team through hiring, coaching, performance management, and career development.
- Own execution of the team roadmap, balancing feature delivery, technical investment, platform reliability, and operational excellence.
- Provide technical leadership for the player stack, architecture decisions, and engineering best practices in partnership with senior engineers.
- Partner closely with Product, Design, TPM, and platform teams to align priorities, manage dependencies, and deliver high-quality customer experiences.
- Foster a culture of accountability, inclusion, continuous learning, and data-driven decision making to improve playback quality, performance, and reliability across devices.
Minimum Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree or higher in Computer Science or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
- 8+ years of relevant software engineering experience, including significant experience leading and managing engineering teams.
- 5+ years of hands-on, production experience with high-quality JavaScript and modern web application development.
- Experience building or supporting media playback technologies in web-based or connected-device environments.
- Experience leading teams through the full software delivery lifecycle, including development, release, and operational support of consumer-facing applications.
- Experience owning application availability, reliability, and performance in production environments.
- Strong communication and leadership skills with a demonstrated ability to grow, mentor, and develop engineers.
- Proven ability to collaborate effectively across technical and non-technical teams, influence stakeholders, and manage cross-functional dependencies.
- Demonstrated success building inclusive, high-performing engineering teams.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Familiarity with streaming media concepts and technologies (MSE/EME, HLS, MPEG-DASH, Transport Stream, CMAF).
- Experience delivering playback or streaming video experiences at scale.
- Experience with connected TV, OTT, or streaming device platforms.
- Background partnering closely with Product, Design, and Platform teams on complex, highly visible products.
- Demonstrated success managing and supporting teams distributed across multiple time zones.
- Experience using data, metrics, or experimentation to inform technical decisions and improve user experience.
The hiring range for this position in New York, NY is $182,400 to $244,600. 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.