Technical Analyst

Job Description

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we're reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world's most beloved stories while also transforming Disney's media business for the future. Whether that's evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney's unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

A few reasons why we think you'd love working for Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology:
• Building the future of Disney's media business: DE&E Technologists are designing and building the infrastructure that will power Disney's media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.
• Reach & Scale: The products and platforms this group builds and operates delight millions of consumers every minute of every day – from Disney+ and Hulu, to ABC News and Entertainment, to ESPN and ESPN+, and much more.
• Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news.

Media Engineering is an innovative organization that is focused on providing the best possible video playback experience, art, and metadata to customers around the world, powered by exceptional technology. This strategic work requires streamlining and repurposing technology across different business and distribution channels – including streaming, linear, and theatrical – so that technology can ebb and flow across the needs of the business.

Job Summary

In the role of a Technical Analyst on the Operations Distribution team, your daily responsibilities will center around proactively mitigating incidents to uphold the reliability of premier streaming platforms. Collaborating with a team of distribution, delivery, and infrastructure engineers, you will contribute to the enhancement of our subscribers' streaming experience.

As part of this dynamic team, you will engage in identifying and resolving performance-related issues, employing effective communication to raise concerns to both internal and external partners. Your focus on minimizing service disruptions and your dedication to ensuring the highest quality end-user experience will be integral to the team's success.

This position offers an opportunity for personal and professional growth, providing exposure to groundbreaking technology within the realm of streaming services.
• Analyze health of streaming products applying internal and third-party tooling
• Act as first responder to both internal and external delivery blocking issues
• Implement mitigation steps to limit windows of impact
• Curate documentation for issue tracking and impact analysis
• Manage distribution policies using internal tooling
• Support live events, high-profile content sunrises and feature releases
• Some evening and weekend shifts required

Required Qualifications & Skills
• 2+ years of experience in streaming media, content distribution, or video technology.
• 2+ years of hands-on experience with Live Video Streaming Systems, including encoding, distribution, and playback.
• Understanding of the live and VOD content delivery life cycle – ''glass to glass''.
• Good communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work in a team.
• Basic quantitative, analytical, problem-solving, debugging, and decision-making skills.
• Exposure to interfacing with OTT and mobile devices (Roku, Game Consoles, Apple TV, Android, iOS, etc.).
• Awareness of network-level tools; ThousandEyes, Kentik, Catchpoint.
• Familiarity with data visualization tools; Grafana, Datadog, Kibana, Splunk.
• Basic understanding of CDNs and their relation to network operations, transit, and peering.
• Exposure to designing and maintaining documentation.
• Familiarity with ticketing and tracking systems like JIRA and Confluence.
• Basic understanding of technical project management.
• Ability to contribute to independent, analytical research.
• Basic knowledge of video streaming quality metrics and technical aspects affecting the viewer experience.
• Ability to assist in identifying and resolving performance issues to optimize end-user experience.
• Exposure to tooling used to analyze subscriber data, trends, and performance metrics.

Preferred Qualifications and Skills
• Exposure to implementing distributed systems with a microservice architecture.
• Experience in a production environment, preferably in a high-availability, large-scale setup on AWS or another public cloud.
• Familiarity with video compression, codec standards (H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, AV1), encoding bitrate ladders, and rate control.
• Exposure to working with third-party services and device manufacturers.
• Basic proficiency in data structures (SQL).

The hiring range for this position in San Francisco, California is $76,600 - $102,700 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 Disney Direct to Consumer:

Disney's Direct to Consumer team oversees the Hulu and Disney+ streaming businesses within Disney Entertainment helping to bring The Walt Disney Company's best-in-class storytelling to fans and families everywhere.

This position is with Disney Streaming Technology LLC, which is part of a business we call Disney Direct to Consumer.

Disney Streaming Technology LLC 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.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-r1kobv-18-189-180-76-42 in your application.