Media Streaming Engineer

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

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.

• 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 execute groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news.
   

Media Engineering is an innovative organization that is passionate about providing the best possible video playback experience, art, and metadata to customers worldwide, powered by exceptional technology. This 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.

Would you love to be at the forefront of shaping the future of video streaming technology?

Are you passionate about video encoding technologies and optimizing video streaming systems?

As a Media Streaming Engineer at Disney, you will be part of the Media Delivery Live team, which is responsible for the entire audio and video encoding supply chain from content acquisition to delivery, consisting of an agile and responsive team of technicians that perform the daily processes and procedures of our live and on-demand video streaming products. The department’s responsibilities provide round-the-clock support for these products, ensuring proper functionality across all platforms and front-end playback scenarios. The Media Delivery Live team provides technical and engineering support for our partner products, including workflow design and implementation, incident management and system health monitoring for live streaming media orchestration and cross-team communications.

You would join a diverse and networked team that collaborates on initiatives that drive streaming video technology to the next level. What makes us different from other media streaming groups? We use innovation and technical experience to transform projects into experiences that can directly impact the happiness of our Subscribers.

This is a mid-level position on the Media Delivery Live team, a small team of engineers responsible for implementing, maintaining, monitoring and supporting live streaming workflows for Disney Streaming’s video encoding and segmenting products. It is an excellent opportunity for someone looking to grow their career in the live streaming space working in a dynamic, fast-paced, and sophisticated technical environment.

When issues arise, you will be one of the first person troubleshooting and providing solutions that ensures minimal impact to our customer’s video experience. You will also assist in the deployment and maintenance of our live encoders.  The ideal candidate would have some background in IT system administration and major background in audio/video production technologies and/or media streaming knowledge.  The ideal candidate must have strong troubleshooting skills, with an ability to capture and analyze issues as they occur.

Responsibilities:

• Monitor live event and linear channel workflows
• Troubleshoot encoding and segmentation issues
• Independently develop and carry out engineering projects that support ever changing workflows and requirements
• Provide maintenance/support of our live encoders and packagers
• Provide training to internal team members
• Documentation of workflows and standard operation procedures
• Provide external teams with guidance related to live encoder/packaging workflows
• Identify and implement optimizations related to monitoring
   

Basic Qualifications

• 3+ years of progressively complex related experience.
• BA/BS or equivalent experience required
• Excellent problem solving and analytical skills
• Strong aptitude to learn new technical concepts
• Strong multi-tasking abilities
• Strong communication skills

• Ability to work independently to solve problems in both the video and IT domains.
• Ability to quickly identify and resolve issues in a time sensitive and dynamic production environment.
• Comfortable acting as a technical resource to other departments to address and resolve technical issues.
• Basic understanding of DAI workflows in a broadcast and OTT environment.
• Basic understanding of video fundamentals.
• Basic knowledge of live video transmission acquisition and/or OTT encoding distribution workflows.
• Knowledge of IP video delivery protocols (HLS, MPEG-TS, DASH).
• Knowledge of video codecs and compression (H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC).
• Knowledge of audio codecs and containers (AAC, PCM, AC-3, EAC-3, MPEG-1 Layer-II).
• Knowledge of video delivery over content distribution networks
• Experience working with encoding platforms.
• Experience working with an enterprise, or workstation, encoding solution such as AWS Elemental, Ateme Titan, or Wowza Cloud.
• Basic understanding of IP networks.
• Basic network transport understanding (Multicast, TCP/UDP connections).
• Comfortable troubleshooting with Transport Stream and Elementary Stream analyzers.
• Comfortable with Mac, Linux, and Windows environments, specifically on the command line
• Linux systems administration experience strongly preferred.
• Experience troubleshooting with hosts, including applications and services, on Linux operating systems (CentOS)
• Knowledge of at least one programming/scripting language
• Basic scripting experience (BASH, Python, Ruby)
• Some experience with open-source encoding software such as FFMPEG or GStreamer.
• Comfortable reading xml/json.
• Experience with REST API communication, either manually (cURL/Postman), or programmatically (through a scripting language library).
• Basic experience with command-line video tools like FFMPEG, MP4Box, and TSDuck.
• Experience writing technical documentation for consumption by both technical and non-technical people.
• Experience working with technology in mid-size to large data centers
• Comfortable working with DSS staff around the country.