Senior Manager, Software Development Engineer in Test

The Walt Disney Company • Morrisville, NC

2d • $163,400 - $219,100 • Onsite

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 create world-class products, enhance storytelling, and drive innovation and scalability. Product Engineering is a unified team responsible for the engineering of Disney Entertainment & ESPN digital and streaming products and platforms, including 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 the Disney Media Player and its performance and functionality across clients and devices. This role involves providing strategic, operational, and technical leadership across multiple quality engineering teams, ensuring robust test automation, reliability, and business impact at scale. The ideal candidate will develop and execute a quality strategy that drives measurable improvement in system reliability, speed of delivery, and product excellence, partnering closely with executives, engineering leadership, and cross-functional business units. This position requires visionary people leadership 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
• Familiarity with streaming media concepts (playback quality, ABR, DRM, codec behavior) or eagerness to develop domain expertise quickly
• Strong desire for establishing and improving product quality
• Advanced proficiency with JS/Node, Python and/or modern OO languages; experience with media player and/or pipeline systems is a plus
• Experience building or managing test automation across multiple device platforms (smart TVs, set-top boxes, mobile, web, gaming consoles)
• Strong communication, stakeholder management, and mentoring skills
• Bachelor's Degree, preferably in Computer Science (or equivalent degree or work experience)

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 across a diverse, multi-platform engineering landscape.
• Define the multi-year vision and strategic roadmap for quality engineering across the Disney Media Player and its cross-device ecosystem, 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, cross-device test infrastructure, and intelligent testing initiatives (AI/ML-driven testing, autonomous pipelines, etc.).
• Sponsor and guide the evolution of shared automation frameworks for media player verification across web, mobile, connected TV, and gaming console platforms.
• 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 for media player quality and cross-device reliability, 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 client engineering, media platform, device certification, product management, and reliability 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 player quality validation and device compatibility testing are embedded early 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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior