Manager, Software Engineer - Video Playback

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 improve 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 here:

• Building the future of Disney’s media: DE&E Technologists are designing and building the infrastructure that will power our 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 implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience

Media Engineering builds the software and systems that prepare media content and metadata for the Disney Streaming platform - providing the best possible playback experience to our viewers.

Media Engineering handles audio, video, and metadata content from ingest through publish - for normalization, processing, and packaging - supporting operator tools and automation for a scalable workflow. We build logic across players and back-end services to measure, control, and optimize playback across our stack.

Our combined Disney and Hulu team is looking for hardworking team players to join the Media Engineering team, who will thrive upon the legacy of Disney and Hulu, embrace unconventional thinking, and who are passionate about contributing to The Walt Disney Company’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) experience through strategic hard work and determination.

Our team is seeking a talented Software Engineering Manager to help us deliver excellent streaming experiences for ESPN, Hulu, and Disney+ as a developer of our low-level embedded cross-platform player. Our team is responsible for playback across several devices including gaming consoles, mobile devices, and set top boxes. You will have the opportunity to lead in the design and implementation of our cross-platform C/C++ and Rust player that runs Disney+ and Hulu on these devices.

We’re looking for an engineering manager with C/C++ and embedded engineering experience as well as video player, and cross platform development experience. You should have a passion for coding and debugging hard problems, and an eagerness to help us deliver seamless video to our subscribers.  As an engineering manager, you team will own the lowest level media pipeline implemented in firmware. You will lead the technical direction of the team’s work, and mentor and provide technical expertise to other engineers. You will work closely with other technical teams in the application layer and backend video services to deliver features.

Responsibilities

• Manage team that develops C++ player media pipeline

• Develop and maintain our Rust and C/C++ player that drives our streaming experience

• Optimize our player to perform well for resource constrained platforms

• Create and review architecture and designs for our team’s projects

• Maintain a strong understanding of our code to identify, research and address issues, collaborate with application development teams, services engineering teams and product management to help understand and explain device limitations and requirements

• Lead in strategies to ensure the quality and stability of our deployments, including testing strategies and telemetry approaches

• Develop our project’s build system and continuous integration system as needed

• Provide technical expertise or mentoring to developers on our team, hold our team accountable to high development standards

Basic Qualifications

• 8+ years of full software development lifecycle experience

• 2+ years of experience managing software engineers

• Fluent in C and C++ and Rust

• Embedded engineering experience

• Experience with playback and video streaming technology

• Experience developing and optimizing multi-threaded applications

• Experience using build runners / compilation tools for multi-platform projects

• Strong individual contributor with a drive to learn and patience to teach others

• Great communication and collaboration skills and a strong teamwork ethic

• BS or BA in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field or equivalent experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Rust

• Experience in Streaming technologies, including:

  • HLS (preferred) or DASH

  • DRM technologies like Playready or Widevine

  • Adaptive Bitrate Streaming Algorithms

  • Caption and subtitle formats such as CEA-608 / 708

  • Codecs AVC, HEVC, AAC, EAC3

• Cross-Platform Development

• Embedded operating system experience

• Experience developing for gaming consoles (e.g. Playstation, Switch), Android devices (e.g.FireTV), or similar devices

• Familiarity with set-top box development and specialized SoCs from manufacturers like Broadcom, MediaTek, etc.