Director, Quality Engineering

At Disney, we’re storytellers. We make the impossible, possible. We are a world-class entertainment and technological leader. Walt’s passion was to continuously envision new ways to move audiences around the world—a passion that remains our touchstone in an enterprise that stretches from theme parks, resorts and a cruise line to sports, news, movies and a variety of other businesses. Uniting each endeavor is a dedication to creating and delivering unforgettable experiences — and we’re constantly looking for ways to enhance these exciting experiences.

The Quality Engineering (QE) team helps elevate quality and testing practices at Disney, promoting and onboarding new technologies, solving sophisticated problems, and integrating with next-generation digital platforms – focused on four key activities: Quality Planning, Quality Assurance, Quality Control, & Continuous Improvement. We use a systematic approach to ensure our products, services, and process meet expectations – maintaining quality through the entire product lifecycle. 

As the Director of Quality Engineering you are responsible for building and leading a team of high performing Managers & QEs, supporting multiple sophisticated systems, underlying infrastructure, and applications for Disney. Your team uses a software engineering approach to architect, design, build, test, & automate applications at scale as you establish and enhance QE & Testing practice across our organization. The team also will develop & maintain test plans, test case, and test scripts to ensure reliability, and focus on a data-driven approach on quality. This includes building and operating processes, hardware, and software solutions that are efficient, effective, and resilient – helping Disney businesses and supporting teams, create, deliver and power our content, experiences and products, better, faster, safer and happier.

What You Will Do:

• Clearly communicate a vision to the team that defines the team’s purpose, ownership, contribution, and commitment to Disney quality, excellence, and a business enabling agile DevOps culture – promoting and driving technical innovation

• Oversee financial planning, test and production environments, architectural fit, compliance, resource scheduling, delivery landmarks, collaboration, and service level objectives

• Oversee, mentor, and develop managers and their teams of engineers who are proficient in software, quality, and security engineering. With that, you will also oversee career management and set operational direction for your areas of ownership

• Act as a highly technical leader (hands on if the need arises), comfortable providing senior level technical direction on enterprise level projects while being a champion of change and proactive business development

• Hold high standards, practice continual improvement, and have a focus on the details – all while solving multiple issues simultaneously

• Driven on delivering stellar customer service experiences to our internal business partners, always looking for opportunities to improve that experience

• Regularly meet with key partners and collaborators to gain feedback, align with need, and grow overall team impact

• Hold exemplary leadership and communication abilities (both verbal and written), partnering closely with business, creative, and technology leaders to pitch new insights, and deliver public presentations

• Own outcomes and resolve project or program delays, conflicts, and performance issues

• Influence others through data-based persuasion and facts based arguments

• Lead others through inspiration, so they follow your example, bring a can-do attitude, and deliver magic to your team and business partners

Required Qualifications & Skills:

• 12+ years of experience leading engineering teams responsible for quality, supporting and deploying products or services

• 5+ years of previous hands-on experience as an engineer

• Detailed knowledge of core internet protocols (TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, etc.), programming languages (Python, Go, C++, Ruby, Java, etc.), & application development platforms

• Understanding of infrastructure as code tools like Terraform or CloudFormation

• Holds understanding of configuration management frameworks (Chef, Puppet, Ansible, Salt, etc.),

• Deep understanding of performance testing and load testing tools (Blazemeter, etc.)

• Deep knowledge of test automation frameworks/tools (Selenium, Appium, etc.) and standards (QTest, UAT testing, etc.)

• Experience managing multiple hosting environments including public and private cloud solutions, including cloud-based testing and API virtualization

• Experience with data visualization, metrics, and data analysis

• Adept at requirements traceability and mapping, defect tracking, and bug reporting

• Familiarity with test case design, test case management, and accessibility/usability testing

• Experience with test data & test environment management, version control, and configuration management

• Experience with vulnerability management, security testing, and penetration testing

• Experience with risk management/risk assessment, quality assurance/control processes, and continuous integration/continuous delivery

• Holds compliance and regulatory knowledge (SOX, HIPAA, GDPR, confidential data management, etc.)

• Adept at overall software development process and agile methodologies

• Excellent written and verbal communications, validated ability to develop and deliver presentations geared for Senior and Executive Management

• Ability to manage budgets, contract language, and vendor management relationships

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience

Preferred Qualifications:

• Related certification/s (CSTE, CTM, CSM, CSPO, AWS-CDE, AZ-400, CKA, CKAD, CISSP, CEH, CDMP, CGEIT, CRISC, ISTQB, Google Cloud Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer, etc.)

• Masters Degree in a related field

The hiring range for this position in Washington D.C. & Bristol CT is $223,700 to $300,000 per year, and in New York City is $234,400 to $314,300 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.