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.

The Business Operations team helps guide and articulate technology strategy and research, and is responsible for driving the day-to-day operation of the Product & Technology organization, including: project and portfolio management and tracking; organization-level capital, space, and resource management and allocation; process management; technical incident management; and our administrative and workplace experience support team.

Job Summary:

The Executive Director, Solutions Engineering leads a critical function within Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology, responsible for strengthening the operational health, stability, and resilience of the services that support consumer, platform, and enterprise experiences. Reporting to senior Product & Technology (P&T) leadership, this role oversees a broad operational scope spanning the Global Support Center and Operational Readiness, with responsibility for setting strategy, driving execution, and leading other executives, managers, and technical professionals across the organization.

This leader is accountable for operational readiness across launch planning, change governance, incident management, problem management, and they oversee the Global Support Centers, an organization that owns monitoring of service health in a complex, always-on technology environment. The role ensures new products, features, and platform changes are introduced in a controlled and supportable manner, major incidents are led with urgency and clarity, and recurring issues are addressed through disciplined root cause resolution. The Executive Director also serves as a key operational voice across the organization, providing clear and timely communication to technical teams, business partners, and senior leaders during critical events and ongoing operational reviews.

In addition, the role is expected to advance modern operational capabilities, including the use of AI-enabled tooling, automation, and intelligent event detection to improve visibility, reduce manual effort, and support faster, more coordinated response. Success in this position will require strong executive judgment, operational leadership at scale, and the ability to influence outcomes across a highly matrixed business and technology landscape. This is an opportunity to shape how Product & Technology anticipates risk, responds to disruption, and continuously improves the reliability of the services it delivers.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

This position exists to provide unified operational leadership across a global, always on technology environment where many teams, platforms, and changes intersect. Without a single accountable leader for operational readiness, monitoring, incident response, and operational communication, service risk is managed in silos and major events are slower to detect, resolve, and communicate.

The Executive Director, Operational Readiness brings these disciplines under one organization and one operating standard. The major areas of work are summarized below.

Operational Readiness and Launch Governance (Approximately 20%)

• Lead the Operational Readiness function and own the support standards that prepare services for production.
• Direct proactive launch planning and change management so new features and platform changes are reviewed, risk assessed, and supportable before go live.
• Oversee launch readiness reviews, change governance and the associated review forums, load tests, runbooks, rollback plans, and a forward view of upcoming changes shared with stakeholders.

Global Service Monitoring, Incident, and Problem Management (Approximately 20%)

• Lead the global 24x7 Support Center, including continuous monitoring of service health and leadership of major incidents.
• Set standards for incident command, escalation, and triage, and serve as the senior point of coordination during high severity events.
• Own problem management, ensuring recurring issues are driven to root cause and corrective actions are tracked to completion.
• Core deliverables include continuous monitoring and alerting, major incident leadership, executive escalation, and post incident reviews that reduce repeat events.

Stakeholder Communication and Operational Reporting (Approximately 20%)

• Serve as the unifying voice of operational communication across the business and technology organizations.
• Translate complex technical status into clear and timely updates for technical teams, business partners, and senior or executive leaders.
• Deliver real time communication during major events, regular operational reviews of service health, change, and risk, and consistent reporting that gives leadership a trusted view of operational posture.

AI Enabled Detection and Operational Automation (Approximately 20%)

• Advance the adoption of AI enabled operational tools that move the organization from a reactive model to a proactive one.
• Leverage anomaly detection, event correlation, and intelligent automation across operational telemetry to surface issues earlier and reduce noise.
• Drive earlier detection of service impacting events, faster and better coordinated response, reduced manual effort for operations teams, and improved service stability over time.

Organizational Leadership, Strategy, and Talent (Approximately 20%)

• Lead other executives, managers, and technical professionals, both directly and through their organizations.
• Develop and execute the operational strategy for P+T, set performance and service standards, and hold accountability for the structure, budget, and results of the function.
• Build a high performing leadership team, establish clear operating standards and policies, and drive talent development, succession, and year over year operational maturity.

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic Qualifications

• Minimum 12 years of progressive experience in technology operations, service delivery, or site reliability, including direct accountability for the operational posture of a large and complex technology environment.
• 10 or more years of leadership experience, with a proven track record of leading a function through multiple levels of managers and directors, in addition to senior technical professionals, both directly and indirectly.
• Demonstrated experience leading mission critical, global technology operations and serving as the executive escalation point during major incidents.
• Proven ability to set and enforce ITIL aligned incident, problem, and change management practices at enterprise scale.
• Experience owning launch and operational readiness governance for major product launches and platform changes.
• Ability to build and deliver operational communications and reporting for audiences that range from technical teams to senior and executive leaders.
• Strong executive presence, with the ability to influence and negotiate with great latitude on outcomes and to present and defend complex or delicate matters with sensitivity to the audience.
• Demonstrated ability to remain calm and decisive under pressure and to bring clarity, structure, and urgency to high severity events.
• A proactive orientation that favors prevention over reactive firefighting, with the judgment to balance speed of restoration against operational risk and sound governance.
• Experience developing functional strategy and operating plans, with accountability for the structure, budget, and results of a function.
• No specific license or certification is required for this position.

Preferred Qualifications

• An advanced degree, such as a Master of Business Administration or a technical master's degree.
• Experience in a large, consumer facing technology environment, such as media, streaming, or entertainment.
• Experience leading a global, always on Support Center, network operations center, or command center.
• Hands on experience adopting AI enabled detection, event correlation, and intelligent automation to improve operational outcomes.
• Experience applying site reliability engineering practices, including automation, observability, resilience, and the reduction of manual effort.
• Experience managing operating budgets, vendor relationships, and sourcing strategy for an operations function.
• ITIL 4 certification at the Foundation level or higher.
• A site reliability, DevOps, or change management certification.
• Relevant cloud platform certifications.

Experience with

• Supporting the operational health of large scale, consumer facing streaming services, including live and on demand video delivery.
• Incident management and major incident command, including incident bridges, escalation, and post incident review.
• Problem management and root cause analysis that drives corrective action through to completion.
• Change management and release readiness, including change review forums and a forward schedule of upcoming changes.
• Continuous monitoring, alerting, and observability across metrics, logs, traces, and events.
• AIOps capabilities, such as anomaly detection, event correlation, and intelligent automation.
• ITSM platforms, such as ServiceNow.
• Operational reporting and executive communication during service impacting events.
• Operating a global, always on support or command center model.
• Service level objectives and the measurement of service health, availability, and reliability.
• Oversight of vendors and managed service partners within an operations function.

Required Education  

• A Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.

The base salary for this position in NY is $217,300.00 - 291,500.00. 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.