Executive Director, Solutions Engineering

Executive Director, Solutions Engineering

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is a global organization of engineers, product developers, designers, technologists, data scientists, and more – all working to build and advance the technological backbone for Disney's media business globally.

The team marries technology with creativity to build world-class products, enhance storytelling, and drive velocity, innovation, and scalability for our businesses. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers. We work with every part of The Walt Disney Company's media portfolio to advance the technological foundation and consumer media touch points serving millions of people around the world.

The Executive Director, Solutions Engineering leads a critical function within Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology, responsible for strengthening the operational health, stability, and resilience of the services that support consumer, platform, and enterprise experiences. Reporting to senior Product & Technology (P&T) leadership, this role oversees a broad operational scope spanning the Global Support Center and Operational Readiness, with responsibility for setting strategy, driving execution, and leading other executives, managers, and technical professionals across the organization.

This leader is accountable for operational readiness across launch planning, change governance, incident management, problem management, and they oversee the Global Support Centers, an organization that owns monitoring of service health in a complex, always-on technology environment. The role ensures new products, features, and platform changes are introduced in a controlled and supportable manner, major incidents are led with urgency and clarity, and recurring issues are addressed through disciplined root cause resolution.

The Executive Director also serves as a key operational voice across the organization, providing clear and timely communication to technical teams, business partners, and senior leaders during critical events and ongoing operational reviews.

In addition, the role is expected to advance modern operational capabilities, including the use of AI-enabled tooling, automation, and intelligent event detection to improve visibility, reduce manual effort, and support faster, more coordinated response. Success in this position will require strong executive judgment, operational leadership at scale, and the ability to influence outcomes across a highly matrixed business and technology landscape.

This is an opportunity to shape how Product & Technology anticipates risk, responds to disruption, and continuously improves the reliability of the services it delivers.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

This position exists to provide unified operational leadership across a global, always on technology environment where many teams, platforms, and changes intersect. Without a single accountable leader for operational readiness, monitoring, incident response, and operational communication, service risk is managed in silos and major events are slower to detect, resolve, and communicate.

The Executive Director, Operational Readiness brings these disciplines under one organization and one operating standard. The major areas of work are summarized below.

• Operational Readiness and Launch Governance (Approximately 20%)
• Global Service Monitoring, Incident, and Problem Management (Approximately 20%)
• Stakeholder Communication and Operational Reporting (Approximately 20%)
• AI Enabled Detection and Operational Automation (Approximately 20%)
• Organizational Leadership, Strategy, and Talent (Approximately 20%)

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

• Minimum 12 years of progressive experience in technology operations, service delivery, or site reliability, including direct accountability for the operational posture of a large and complex technology environment.
• 10 or more years of leadership experience, with a proven track record of leading a function through multiple levels of managers and directors, in addition to senior technical professionals, both directly and indirectly.
• Demonstr…