Principal Media Streaming Engineer

The Walt Disney Company

Principal Media Streaming Engineer at Disney, designing and building tools for video encoding and processing workflows. Collaborating with diverse teams to enhance VOD products and technologies for streaming services.

Posted 5/8/2026full-timeNew York City • California, New York • 🇺🇸 United StatesLead💰 $163,100 - $218,700 per yearWebsite

Tech Stack

Tools & technologies

AWSCloudDockerFFmpegGoogle Cloud PlatformGrafanaKubernetesLinuxPythonRuby

About the role

Key responsibilities & impact

Drive initiatives to improve the reliability, scalability, and performance of VOD processing and the platform experience
Partner with development teams on feature requests, system optimizations, and architectural improvements
Lead proof-of-concept projects and technology evaluations to inform strategic decisions
Design and develop dashboards, reporting tools, and data visualization solutions that provide actionable insights into encoding throughput, error rates, and operational KPIs
Partner with stakeholders to define key metrics and translate business requirements into technical reporting solutions
Maintain and enhance existing reporting infrastructure to ensure accuracy and reliability
Develop automation solutions that augment and streamline day-to-day operational workflows, reducing manual intervention and improving efficiency
Implement monitoring, alerting, and auto-remediation systems for VOD processing infrastructure
Provide technical guidance and mentorship to team members
Collaborate with cross-functional teams including Product, Engineering, and Operations to align on priorities and deliverables
Document workflows, standard operating procedures, and technical specifications.

Requirements

What you’ll need

Minimum of 10 years of progressively complex related experience
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Electrical Engineering, and/or equivalent work experience
Experience designing and building VOD processing and encoding workflows
Experience working with on prem, and cloud based, transcoding and encoding solutions
Ability to work independently to solve problems in both the video and IT domains
Deep knowledge of video codecs and compression. (H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC, AV1)
Knowledge of audio codecs and containers. (AAC, PCM, AC-3, EAC-3, Dolby Atmos)
Strong to advanced experience with command-line video tools like FFMPEG, MP4Box, and MediaInfo
Extensive knowledge of ABR/OTT technologies. (HLS, DASH, CMAF)
Expert understanding of video fundamentals (resolution, frame rates, color spaces, HDR)
Comfortable with Mac, Linux, and Windows environments, specifically on the command line
Strong communication skills
Advanced scripting experience. (Python, BASH, Ruby)
Experience building automation tools, dashboards, and reporting systems
Experience with REST API communication, preferably programmatically (through a scripting language library)
Experience writing technical documentation for consumption by both technical and non-technical people
Experience with data visualization and metrics platforms. (Grafana, Datadog, or similar)
Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP) and containerization. (Docker, Kubernetes)
Comfortable acting as a technical lead

Benefits

Comp & perks

A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package
full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered

ATS Keywords

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Applicant Tracking System Keywords

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Hard Skills & Tools

VOD processingencoding workflowsvideo codecsH.264H.265AV1audio codecsFFMPEGPythonscripting

Soft Skills

problem solvingcommunicationmentorshipcollaborationindependencetechnical guidancedocumentation

Certifications

Bachelor’s degree in Computer ScienceBachelor’s degree in Information TechnologyBachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering