Senior Media Performance Engineer, Quality
Company: The Walt Disney Company
Location: Glendale
Posted on: April 1, 2026
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Job Description:
Job Posting Title: Senior Media Performance Engineer, Quality
Req ID: 10144182 Job Description: 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. 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, & metadata content
from ingest through publish - for normalization, processing, and
packaging - supporting operator tools and automation for a scalable
workflow. We build and coordinate logic across players and back-end
services to measure, control, and optimize playback across our
stack. The Media Experience, Performance Engineering - Quality Team
is nested at the intersection of technology and innovation within
Disney Entertainment and ESPN Technology (DE&ET). The team’s
mission is to surface, investigate, and report playback anomalies
and regressions across in-field performance data of TWDC’s
streaming platforms. This work directly supports the company
priority to enhance consumer experience by ensuring exceptional
product quality. As a Senior Media Performance Engineer within the
Quality Team, you will help shape the future of media technology in
a multidisciplinary environment spanning critical work streams. You
will play a key role within the MXPE Quality Team to help drive
improvements to playback Quality of Experience (QoE) across the OTT
device ecosystem by identifying and troubleshooting issues with the
greatest impact on subscribers. Using consolidated QoE frameworks,
advanced tools, and data?driven insights, you will document,
ticket, and communicate findings to partner teams, enabling timely
resolution through effective cross?organizational collaboration.
You will help define and uphold standards for an ideal playback
experience—high?quality video and audio, fast start times,
uninterrupted playback, and more. Through close collaboration with
engineering, product, and player teams, you will accelerate
innovation, contribute to research, and provide clear technical
context to stakeholders, supporting alignment and delivering
exceptional experiences to our subscribers. Responsibilities:
Analyze data to identify areas for improvement and change. Gather
requirements and suggest solutions cross functionally as an
integrator between business needs and technology implementation to
solve for complex testing scenarios. Formulate plans with other
engineers for future operational development. Perform hands-on
device capabilities assessments and maintain product feature
specifications per device platform; staying current with industry
trends. Understand and track technical implementation and hardware
constraints by maintaining documentation of test and analysis
results across platforms. Basic Qualifications: Bachelor’s degree
in Data Analytics, Computer Science, Information Technology, or
equivalent major, and/or equivalent work experience Minimum of 5
years of substantial experience in streaming media, content
distribution, or video technology Minimum of 3 years of proven
expertise in Live Video Streaming Systems, including encoding,
distribution, and playback. Comprehensive understanding of the live
and VOD content delivery life cycle – “glass to glass”. In-depth
knowledge of video compression, codec standards (H.264/AVC,
H.265/HEVC, AV1), encoding bitrate ladders, and rate control.
Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability
to mentor junior team members in a distributed and cross functional
team. Strong quantitative, analytical, problem-solving, debugging,
and decision-making skills. Proficient interfacing with OTT and
mobile devices (ex: Roku, Game Consoles, Apple TV, Android, iOS,
etc.). Proficient use of data visualization and analytics tools
(ex: Grafana, Datadog, Databricks, Looker, Conviva). Proficient in
analyzing Quality of Experience (QoE) playback metrics and
end?to?end performance indicators. Experience in designing and
maintaining a matrix of complex documentation. Experience with
ticketing and tracking systems like JIRA and Confluence.
Understanding of CDNs and their relation to network operations,
transit, and peering. Expertise in working with third-party
services and device manufacturers. Ability to conduct independent
research. Strong working knowledge in advanced data structures
(SQL, NoSQL). Knowledge of video streaming quality metrics and
technical aspects affecting the viewer experience. Ability to
identify and resolve performance issues, optimizing end-user
experience. Hands-on experience with tooling used to analyze
subscriber data, trends, and performance metrics. Analytical
self-starter with a proven ability to deliver results in ambiguous
environments while effectively multi-tasking and re-prioritizing as
business needs evolve . Preferred Qualifications: Experience in
designing and implementing distributed systems with a focus on
microservice architecture. Background in technical project
management. DISNEYTECH The hiring range for this position is
$97,500 to $130,700 per year in Glendale, CA. 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. Job Posting Segment: PE - Media Platform Job
Posting Primary Business: PE - Media Platform - Media Experience
Primary Job Posting Category: Media Performance Engineering
Employment Type: Full time Primary City, State, Region, Postal
Code: Glendale, CA, USA Alternate City, State, Region, Postal Code:
Date Posted: 2026-03-26
Keywords: The Walt Disney Company, Sun City , Senior Media Performance Engineer, Quality, Engineering , Glendale, Arizona
