Senior Manager, SDET
About The Position
Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is a global organization focused on building and advancing the technological backbone for Disney’s media business. The team combines technology with creativity to develop world-class products, enhance storytelling, and drive innovation and scalability. This role is within the Product Engineering group, which is responsible for the engineering of Disney Entertainment & ESPN digital and streaming products and platforms, encompassing product engineering, media engineering, quality engineering, and the engineering behind personalization, commerce, lifecycle, and identity. The DEEP & Technology team is seeking a highly experienced Senior Manager (M3) to lead and scale our Quality Engineering organization supporting various commerce, data and advertising systems. This position will provide strategic, operational, and technical leadership across multiple quality engineering teams, ensuring robust test automation, reliability, and business impact at scale. The successful candidate will develop and execute a quality strategy that drives measurable improvement in system reliability, speed of delivery, and product excellence, collaborating closely with executives, engineering leadership, and cross-functional business units. Ideal candidates are visionary people leaders with a proven track record of growing high-performing teams, implementing transformational quality programs, and delivering significant value in complex and rapidly evolving environments.
Requirements
- 10+ years of experience in software quality engineering, test automation, or software development, with 5+ years managing managers or leading multi-team organizations
- Proven track record of scaling and transforming quality engineering functions in complex, cloud-native, high-scale environments
- Demonstrated experience defining and driving organizational strategy, advocating for quality at the senior/executive level, and influencing business outcomes
- Expertise in modern test automation frameworks, CI/CD, and emerging trends in software quality
- Knowledge of software engineering practices and agile approaches
- Strong desire for establishing and improving product quality
- Experience conducting security and performance tests for identity and access management systems and platforms
- Hands on experience testing (manual and automated) identity and access management systems and platforms
- Advanced proficiency with Python or modern OO languages; experience with ad-tech or large-scale systems is a plus
- Willingness to take challenges head on while being part of a team
- Strong communication, stakeholder management, and mentoring skills
- B.S. in Computer Science (or equivalent degree or work experience)
Nice To Haves
- experience with ad-tech or large-scale systems is a plus
Responsibilities
- Lead, inspire, and develop multiple quality engineering teams and people leaders (managers/technical leads), fostering a culture of technical excellence, inclusion, and continuous learning.
- Define the multi-year vision and strategic roadmap for quality engineering across the advertising platform, aligned with company business and technology goals.
- Champion organizational transformation, driving the adoption of best-in-class practices, tools, and quality metrics at scale.
- Set the technical direction for large-scale test automation architecture, cloud-native solutions, and intelligent testing initiatives (AI/ML-driven testing, autonomous pipelines, etc.).
- Sponsor and guide the evolution of shared automation frameworks, tools, and platforms across product and engineering teams.
- Ensure timely resolution and prevention of high-severity outages through organizational postmortems, root cause analysis, and systemic improvements.
- Develop, communicate, and execute the quality engineering strategy across multiple product groups, balancing innovation, risk, and operational needs.
- Oversee resource planning, hiring, and organizational design to ensure scaling and allocation of quality engineering talent to meet evolving business needs.
- Take ultimate responsibility for quality governance, compliance, and traceability across all product lines within your scope.
- Build and maintain strong working relationships with senior leadership in engineering, product management, data science, product operations, and business teams.
- Articulate quality risks, trade-offs, and long-term strategies to executive stakeholders; provide regular reporting on quality metrics and organizational outcomes.
- Lead cross-functional initiatives to ensure test automation and quality engineering are embedded early and effectively throughout the development lifecycle.
Benefits
- 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.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
