Manager, Data services (Database Reliability Engineering)

At Disney, we’re storytellers. We make the impossible, possible. The Walt Disney Company is 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 commitment to creating and delivering unforgettable experiences — and we’re constantly looking for new ways to enhance these exciting experiences.

The Enterprise Technology mission is to deliver technology solutions that align to business strategies while enabling enterprise efficiency and promoting cross-company collaborative innovation. Our group drives competitive advantage by enhancing our consumer experiences, enabling business growth, and advancing operational excellence.

The Database Reliability Engineering (DBRE) team helps elevate SRE practices as it applies to Database Management technology and services at TWDC, promoting and onboarding new technologies, solving complex problems and integrating with next generation digital platforms.  

Database Reliability Engineers (DBRE) use a software engineering approach to architect, design, automate, monitor, and build applications at scale. This includes operating and engineering software with close business segment alignment to deliver platforms through efficient, effective and resilient architectures. DBREs are talented engineers that are focused on improving quality through a data driven approach: instrumentation, automation, and functional/unit testing.

The Database Reliability Engineering (DBRE) team is a group of highly trained professional database engineers who build, deploy and operate database platforms in an SRE/DevOps manner.  This team is responsible for operating the following platforms: SqlServer and DB2 for TWDC.  These workloads are mostly running on premises hosting environments as well as in CSP’s.  This team manages the data platforms that operate some of the more critical Disney applications and services.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead, build, and mentor a high-performing DBRE team supporting mission-critical workloads

• Define and drive the DBRE operating model, promoting reliability, automation, and a product mindset

• Own database platform strategy across on-prem, cloud, and hybrid environments

• Establish and monitor SLOs, SLAs, observability standards, and incident response processes

• Architect and oversee solutions for HA, DR, backup/recovery, capacity planning, and performance optimization

• Drive automation-first practices for database provisioning, patching, deployments, and compliance

• Ensure compliance with operational standards, security policies, and best practices

• Partner with Application Engineering, Cloud DevOps, Security, and Infrastructure teams

• Evaluate and adopt emerging database technologies and tooling aligned to business needs

• Lead cost optimization efforts across database platforms and cloud consumption

• Provide architectural guidance, technical reviews, and executive-level reporting

• Coordinate complex upgrades, migrations, and modernization initiatives

• Represent DBRE in cross-functional leadership forums and stakeholder communications

• Manage budgets, vendor relationships, and continuous improvement initiatives

Required Qualifications & Skills: 

• 8+ years of hands-on experience with major RDBMS platforms including:
  SqlServer and DB2.

• Proven experience managing production databases across on-premise and cloud platforms, including AWS RDS, Azure Managed Databases

• Experience leading/developing technical teams in fast-paced, matrixed environments

• Strong verbal/written communication; executive-level presentations

• Familiarity in programming/scripting (Shell, Python, Go, Java, C++, Ruby)

• Experience with configuration management/automation (Ansible, Chef, Puppet, SaltStack)

• Familiarity with CI/CD pipeline integration and database deployment automation to support reliable and scalable database operations

• Familiarity with infra-as-code (Terraform, AWS CloudFormation)

• Multi-cloud/hybrid environment experience; understanding of web app infrastructure

• Proven ability to manage and optimize budgets

Nice to Have:

• Experience with additional DBMS: Oracle, Postgres and MySQL

• Knowledge of Linux & Windows server environments

• Familiarity with container orchestration (Kubernetes)

• Familiarity with ServiceNow

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience

The hiring range for this position in Seattle, WA is $148,700 to $199,400 per year and in New York, NY is $148,700 to $199,400 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.