Lead Systems Engineer

The Walt Disney Company; Glendale (CA); On-site; USD 129,000 - 173,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus

Job summary

The Walt Disney Company in Glendale, CA seeks a Lead Systems Engineer to drive hybrid infrastructure design and delivery for Disney Entertainment and ESPN Tech. You translate enterprise designs into automated deployment patterns across on‑premises and cloud environments, shaping scalable, high‑availability platforms.

You will mentor engineers, lead major initiatives, and partner across teams to ensure robust operations, performance, and continuous modernization of core services.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a technical field is required.
• 7+ years of systems/infrastructure engineering experience.
• Expertise in hybrid infrastructure (on-prem + cloud) and complex storage systems.
• Experience with VMware, Kubernetes, and distributed systems.
• Strong automation skills (IaC, CI/CD) and leadership capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Lead design and implementation of hybrid infrastructure systems.
• Translate architectures into scalable deployment patterns.
• Drive reliability and 5 9's availability across platforms.
• Mentor engineers and lead multi-team projects.
• Collaborate cross-functionally to accelerate delivery.

Skills

Hybrid infrastructure

NFS & S3 storage

Automation / IaC / CI/CD

Leadership across initiatives

Distributed systems

Education

Bachelor's degree in a technical field

Tools

VMware

Kubernetes

Job description

Lead Systems Engineer

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.

Product Engineering is a unified team responsible for the engineering of Disney Entertainment & ESPN digital and streaming products and platforms. This includes product engineering, media engineering, quality assurance, engineering behind personalization, commerce, lifecycle, and identity.

The Lead Systems Engineer is a senior technical contributor responsible for delivering and scaling critical infrastructure platforms across hybrid environments, including on-premises data centers and public cloud. This role bridges architecture and execution by translating enterprise-level designs into reusable, automated patterns while leading complex infrastructure initiatives across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Platform Engineering & Delivery
  • Lead design and implementation of hybrid infrastructure systems focused primarily on origin object storage systems of content.
  • Translate architectural designs into scalable deployment patterns
  • Identify critical metric KPI's to drive improvements across all platforms
  • Deliver solutions across on-prem and cloud environments
  • Drive continuous improvements to support our goal of 5 9's availability.
• Automation & Modernization
  • Drive Infrastructure-as-Code and CI/CD best practices
  • Lead infrastructure migrations and modernization initiatives
• Reliability & Operations
  • Lead incident response and ensure production stability
  • Support high availability, 24x7 infrastructure services
• Technical Leadership
  • Mentor engineers and improve engineering practices
  • Act as a technical leader across multi-team projects
• Collaboration
  • Partner cross-functionally to drive delivery
  • Communicate technical decisions clearly

  Basic Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in a technical field
  • 7+ years of systems/infrastructure engineering experience
  • Expertise in hybrid infrastructure (on-prem + cloud)
  • Expertise in complex large scale high performance multiprotocol NFS & S3 object storage systems
  • Experience with VMware, Kubernetes, and distributed systems
  • Strong automation skills (IaC, CI/CD)
  • Proven leadership across complex technical initiatives

  Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience with large-scale migrations
  • Storage and data lifecycle expertise
  • Observability and monitoring expertise

  #DISNEYTECH

  The hiring range for this position in New York, NY is $135,400.00 - $181,600.00 per year, and in Los Angeles, CA, $129,300 - $173,300 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.

  Details

  • Employment Type: Full time
  • Primary City, State, Region, Postal Code: Glendale, CA, USA
  • Alternate City, State, Region, Postal Code: USA - NY - 7 Hudson Square, USA - WA - 925 4th Ave
  • Date Posted: 2026-09-21