Lead Data Engineer, Data Reliability at The Walt Disney Company

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we’re reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world’s most beloved stories while also transforming Disney’s media business for the future. Whether that’s evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

A few reasons why we think you’d love working for Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

• Building the future of Disney’s media business: DE&E Technologists are designing and building the infrastructure that will power Disney’s media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.

• Reach & Scale: The products and platforms this group builds and operates delight millions of consumers every minute of every day – from Disney+ and Hulu, to ABC News and Entertainment, to ESPN and ESPN+, and much more.

• Innovation: We develop and execute groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news.

The Data Reliability Engineering team for Disney’s Product and Data Engineering team is responsible for maintaining and improving the reliability of Disney Entertainment’s big data platform, which processes hundreds of terabytes of data and billions of events daily.

About The Role

The Lead Data Engineer will help us in the ongoing mission of delivering outstanding services to our users allowing Disney Entertainment to be more data-driven. You will work closely with our partner teams to monitor and drive improvements for reliability and observability of their critical data pipelines and deliverables. This is a high-impact role where your work informs decisions affecting millions of consumers, with a direct tie to The Walt Disney Company’s revenue. You will be making an outsized impact in an organization that values data as its top priority. We are a tight and driven team with big goals, so we seek people who are passionate about solving the toughest challenges and working at scale, using, supporting, and building distributed systems in a fast-paced collaborative team environment. We also support a healthy work-life-balance.

Responsibilities

• Assist in designing and developing a platform to support incident observability and automation. This team will be required to build high quality data models and products that monitor and reports on data pipeline health and data quality.

• Lead project work efforts internally and externally setting project deliverables, review design documents, perform code reviews and help mentor junior members of the team.

• Collaborate with engineering teams to improve, maintain, performance tune, and respond to incidents on our big data pipeline infrastructure.

• Own building out key components for observability and intelligent monitoring of data pipelines and infrastructure to achieve early and automated anomaly detection and alerting. Present your research and insights to all levels of the company, clearly and concisely.

• Build solutions to continually improve our software release and change management process using industry best practices to help DSS maintain legal compliance.

Basic Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience working on mission critical data pipelines and ETL systems.

• 7+ years of hands-on experience with big data technology, systems and tools such as AWS, Hadoop, Hive, and Snowflake.

• Detailed problem-solving approach, coupled with a strong sense of ownership and drive.

• A passionate bias to action and passion for delivering high-quality data solutions.

• Expertise with common Data Engineering languages such as Python, Scala, Java, SQL and a proven ability to learn new programming languages.

• Experience with workflow orchestration tools such as Airflow.

• Deep understanding of end-to-end pipeline design and implementation.

• Attention to detail and quality with excellent problem solving and interpersonal skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degrees are a plus.

• Strong data visualizations skills to convey information and results clearly.

• Ability to work independently and drive your own projects.

• Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills.

• Impactful presentation skills in front of a large and diverse audience.

• Experience with DevOps tools such as Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, etc.

• Innate curiosity about consumer behavior and technology.

• Experience with event messaging frameworks like Apache Kafka.

• A fan of movies and television is a strong plus.

Required Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience.

Additional Information

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in Santa Monica, California is $149,300 to $200,200 per year, in Bristol, Connecticut is $149,300 to $200,200 per year, in Seattle, Washington is $156,300 to $209,600 per year, in New York City, NY is $156,300 to $209,600 per year, and in San Francisco, California is $163,500 to $219,200 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.