Director, Data Engineering and Products

Job Summary:

Director, Data Engineering and Products

At the Walt Disney Studios, we tell stories. The Data Services team tells our story with data. Our mission is to help bring data and decision-making closer together at the Studios. We use modern technologies and an agile/lean culture to bring insights, automation, and cutting-edge technologies to our Studio Marketing & Production teams.

We’re looking for a Director, Data Engineering to lead the strategy, design, and execution of The Walt Disney Studios’ data enablement system, including data engineering, data automation, data pipeline and data governance. This position will take a leadership role in modernizing the existing data platform and architecture and will actively manage the ongoing roadmap and prioritization of The Walt Disney Studios’ core data infrastructure. This is a highly collaborative and visible role that will work across the organization to design and deliver scalable data solutions that enable data science, content, visualization, reporting and marketing throughout the entire production pipeline.

The successful candidate will collaborate with the Marketing, Operations, Production Technology and Media and Digital teams to design and develop the next generation data platform, products, and Analytical capabilities to support real-time, data-driven decisions.

Responsibilities:

• Architect and build a robust, scalable, and highly available distributed infrastructure.
• Execute large value projects across business units starting with Production, Operations, and Marketing data to support real time data-driven decisions.
• Champion a data-driven culture and drive long-term business value creation through development of best-in-class analytics capabilities.
• Use expertise to identify opportunities to leverage data and provide guidance to colleagues related to capture, analysis and visualization of information.
• Successfully maintain and enhance real-time streaming and ingestion pipelines.
• The ideal candidate should be willing to execute and be hands-on. Apply statistics, clustering, modeling, and machine learning algorithms to complex business problems.
• Work with the Business units to establish a data governance model associated with who uses data and how KPI’s are defined.
• Provide direction on how data should fit together across our touch points.
• Establish a Data and Analytics roadmap based on the business priorities working with all divisions.
• Strong ability to manage priorities across multiple stake holders.
• Lead and manage large-scale projects and competing priorities.
• Develop engineering best practices, guidelines, procedures, and repeatable and scalable development and operations.
• Set priorities, mentor and provide technical direction to a team of data engineers, product and project managers.

Qualifications:

• B.S or M.S in Statistics, Data Science, Computer Science, Engineering or related quantitative degree.
• 10 years of working experience in data engineering.
• 5+ years of experience in data science and analytics.
• Experience in multiple large-scale data processing systems, telemetry, data-driven performance, and reliability improvement across platforms and products.
• Proven ability to proactively drive a data engineering roadmap, and prioritize it based on impact and strategic alignment with the key priorities of TWDS.
• Experience with modern data engineering stack, processing technologies, data, and analytic pipelines.
• Solid understanding of both relational and NoSQL database technologies.
• Experience with AWS (S3, EC2, EMR), orchestration/CI tools (Kubernetes + Docker, Jenkins or equivalent), and experience with Databricks.
• Deep expertise with Spark, Python, SQL/Hive, and Scala.
• Proven experience in data foundation for advanced machine learning problems, and data/analytics.
• Proven experience with machine learning and statistical analysis, programming and scripting capabilities.
• Expertise in partnering with external data engineering, Analytics and ML teams to enable new opportunities for TWDS.
• Demonstrated ability to establish strong partnerships and drive processes across organizations.
• Outstanding communication and presentation skills, written and verbal, to all levels of TWDS.
• Experience with Agile methodologies.

Preferred Experience:

• Experience in Entertainment or Media preferred.
• Experience with social media, audience insights, programmatic advertising, ad tech is a plus.

The hiring range for this position in California is $198,932 to $266,860 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.

About Studios Content:

The Studios Content group encompasses a collection of world-class entertainment studios that produce high-quality cinematic storytelling for both theatrical and streaming release. It is also home to Disney Theatrical Productions, producer of popular stage shows on Broadway and around the world.

About The Walt Disney Company:

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise with the following business segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, Disney Parks, and Experiences and Products. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family. Disney’s stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.

This position is with Walt Disney Pictures, which is part of a business we call Studios Content.

Walt Disney Pictures is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, protected veteran status or any other basis prohibited by federal, state or local law. Disney fosters a business culture where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best stories and be relevant in a rapidly changing world.