Sr. System Reliability Engineer

Job Summary:

At Disney, we‘re storytellers. We make the impossible possible. We do this through utilizing and developing cutting-edge technology and pushing the envelope to bring stories to life through our movies, products, interactive games, parks and resorts, and media networks. Now is your chance to join our talented team that delivers unparalleled creative content to audiences around the world.

The Systems Reliability Engineering (SRE) team helps elevate SRE practices at TWDC, promoting and onboarding new technologies, solving complex problems and integrating with next generation digital platforms. Systems Reliability Engineers use a software engineering approach to architect, design, automate, monitor, and build applications at scale. This includes operating and engineering software with close business segment alignment to deliver platforms through efficient, effective and resilient architectures. SREs are talented engineers that are focused on improving quality through a data driven approach: instrumentation, automation, and functional/unit testing.

This position is for a systems reliability engineering (SRE) eager to play an integral role on the IAM SRE engineering team for The Walt Disney Company to help elevate SRE practices, onboard new technologies, solve complex problems and integrate next generation digital platforms.  

As a Disney SRE, you will help create, build and deliver amazing experiences for our guests, fans and businesses. Primary responsibilities include helping existing, new and emerging business teams onboard technologies or platforms to accelerate their businesses.  This will include consultation, designing, building, and supporting development pipelines, automating infrastructure and operations, creating telemetry for monitoring, engineering high reliability and reinforcing best practices to secure our company and guest data. You will be expected to have some systems administration skills in Linux and Windows platforms, and must have experience with software development (e.g. Python, Go, Java, Node), CI Pipeline tools (e.g. Jenkins), Git source management, cloud hosting (AWS, GCP & Azure), container computing (e.g. Docker, OCI), web technologies and the DevOps team culture. 

You will work with engineering, creative and production teams in an extremely collaborative and high-energy environment to brainstorm, architect, gather requirements, troubleshoot, and provide stellar customer support.  You are passionate about constantly learning, applying technology to solve complex problems, and is a highly motivated, optimistic, proactive, creative thought leader and project manager. 

As an SRE, you will:

Translate ideas into tangible products that shape experiences by focusing on a systematic approach to automation, resiliency, efficiency, stability, security, performance, and capacity management, as well as documentation and serve as a subject matter expert through internal and external tech talks and conferences.

Make an impact on a transformative team and culture by designing, building, and supporting systems for a large-scale enterprise production environment that hosts a variety of digital workloads and experiences for The Walt Disney Company.
 
Collaborate and serve as a thought partner to work with various Engineering and Production teams to gather requirements, troubleshoot issues, apply a scientific approach to continuous improvement, challenge the status quo, promote a high accountability trust culture and provide stellar customer support.  
 
Support initial discovery, architecture, design, automation, implementation and operationalization, including:

• Business Engagement and Requirements Gathering
• Architectural Review, Proof of Concept Work, and Onboarding
• Project: Build and Operationalize New Systems/Sites/Services/Products
• Systematic Load Testing, Troubleshooting, Optimization and Tuning
• Create System and Application Monitors, Trending Metrics and Reports
• Development: Tools and Automation Frameworks
• Hosting Platforms and Infrastructure Design and Support
• Documentation: Creation of Application Infrastructure Design documents, Operational Runbooks, and Knowledge Base Articles

Technical Requirements:

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science or related field, with a minimum of 5 years of related work experience.
• Understand how to install and configure operating systems, specifically with expertise in Linux and Windows Server.
• Software Development Continuous Integration (CI) Pipeline knowledge (Jenkins)
• Experience with Source Control Management systems (Git)
• Experience in public and private cloud hosting services (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, OpenStack, CloudStack) as well as familiarity with container computing (eg. Docker, Mesos, ECS/Kubernetes, Terraform).
• Recognized as a subject matter expert on at least one OS and proficient in multiple operating systems, including OS performance monitoring, setup, configuration, tuning, and troubleshooting.
• Proficient in web or webserver technologies:  Java, Node.js, Tomcat, IIS, Apache/nginx, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc., including being able to perform basic setup, configuration, and troubleshooting.
• Understand internet technologies and network protocols, including HTTP, basic load balancing configurations, security zones, VIPs, SNMP, REST and DNS.
• Proficient in SSL/TLS certificate management and public key cryptography technology, specifically X.509 used for HTTPS.
• Able to implement existing base standards for new systems and/or applications with mentoring for all of the following: Site monitoring and instrumentation, Application monitoring and instrumentation, System monitoring and instrumentation, and Resiliency and performance.
• Able to diagnose simple to complex system problems.
• Has experience on one or more load balancer platforms (setting up pools, VIPs, layer 7 routing, debugging).
• Able to author tools and scripts to be used by others to automate repeatable production tasks in standard languages like Bash, Ruby, Python, or Go.
• Advanced skills in at least one programming language such as Python, PHP, Ruby, Java, Go, Swift or C++ and able to build unit test suites for all software being developed.
• Experience supporting and/or developing backend tools or services
• Able to perform and provide in depth analysis on load test runs against a moderately complex system.
• Demonstrates exceptional troubleshooting methodology, including the ability to author and instruct new methodologies to the SE team.
• Independently resolve moderately to highly complex system and application incidents.
• Able to identify and propose system and application fixes for performance bottlenecks.
• Able to evaluate new application requirements for capacity and run-time best practices.
• Able to evaluate new system and/or infrastructure solutions for technical feasibility against known requirements and standards.
• Effective at dealing with change: Able to transition in role or handle a significant modification to workflow or technology with minimal ramp-up time and with very little guidance.

Communication and Leadership Requirements

• Excellent verbal and written communication to all levels in the organization.
• Serves as primary point of contact with Manager.
• Demonstrates curiosity and continuous learning and self-improvement.
• Ability to lead functional teams in systems integration and design including writing operational specs, architectural diagrams, test plans and requirements management.
• Communication of ideas and solutions in a clear and organized manner.
• Clear and effective presentations to groups of people.
• Effective project management and planning on large-scale projects (familiarity with agile/scrum and water-fall project management a plus).
• Ability to design and deliver training to other staff.
• Construction of concise and complete technical documentation.
• Mentoring of Jr. Staff on technical material.
• Viewed as a reliable technical resource for others.
• Detailed understanding of the goals and requirements of the business supported.

The hiring range for this position in Glendale, California is $138,900 to $186,200 per year. 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.