The Director, Software Engineering is a senior technology and site leader within Disney Experiences Technology – Bangalore, accountable for the full-stack, end-to-end platforms and services that power immersive digital and physical guest experiences across our theme parks, resorts, cruises, vacations, and consumer touchpoints — ensuring they are scalable, secure, and worthy of Disney's guest-focused standard.
This leader is also the most senior Disney Experiences leader on site in Bangalore, accountable for standing up and maturing this newly opened office — its culture, employee experience, and daily operation — for the entire team on site, including employees outside the direct engineering reporting line.
Responsibilities:
As an organizational leader, you will set the technical vision, define strategies, and drive execution of the business plans for Disney Experiences, leading through senior managers and inspiring the entire site — including employees outside your direct reporting line — to deliver innovative, reliable solutions.
- Set and communicate the technical vision, strategy, and priorities for full-stack, end-to-end digital platforms across multiple engineering domains, ensuring stability, scalability, and modern best practices.
- Own end-to-end delivery across product management, software development, project and program management, quality engineering, and site reliability engineering (SRE) — a single accountable line from requirements through design, build, test, release, and production operations.
- Lead through senior managers and managers in a matrixed organization where many team members hold dotted-line reporting relationships into U.S.-based product and technology leaders; align priorities, ways of working, career development, and performance expectations across both reporting lines, ensuring those employees are equally supported and included in site life.
- Establish engineering standards, development practices, and Agile delivery discipline — backlog health, release predictability, and delivery metrics — fostering a culture of metrics-driven experimentation and continuous improvement.
- Own quality and production health with quality engineering and SRE, including test automation, CI/CD quality gates, service level objectives, incident management, and on-call practices.
- Drive architectural decisions for content management, personalization, and full-stack web platforms that integrate with internal systems and avoid vendor lock-in.
- Partner with design, infrastructure, DevOps, security, and enterprise technology teams to translate business requirements into efficient, secure, and compliant technical solutions.
- Manage third-party technology partnerships and licensing, influencing vendor roadmaps and internal sourcing decisions to optimize technical fit, performance, and cost.
- Build, mentor, and grow high-performing teams and leaders, providing continuous coaching and feedback and connecting people to the “why” behind decisions and the broader Disney Experiences vision.
- Serve as the senior on-site escalation point and the visible face of Disney Experiences Technology in Bangalore.
- Own site culture and employee experience across all functions at the location — onboarding, engagement, recognition, internal communications, and site events — creating an inclusive environment where Disney values are experienced and every voice is heard.
- Partner with Human Resources, Facilities, Security, Legal, Finance, and Corporate Real Estate on workplace operations, employee relations, safety, business continuity, and local employment compliance.
- Build Disney's local employment brand and talent pipeline in the Bangalore market, partnering with Talent Acquisition to attract senior engineering and leadership talent as the site scales.
Required Qualifications:
- Minimum 12 years of software engineering or technology leadership experience, including 5+ years leading managers or senior managers in complex organizations.
- Proven experience leading a multi-disciplinary technology organization spanning product, engineering, delivery, quality, and reliability functions, with end-to-end ownership from requirements through release and production operations for high-traffic, consumer-facing platforms.
- Strong understanding of content management systems, personalization platforms, e-commerce and transactional experiences, and modern full-stack web development, including performance optimization.
- Demonstrated ability to establish engineering standards, drive architectural decisions, and implement AI tools and practices to improve productivity and efficiency.
- Extensive experience leading Agile delivery at scale (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, or equivalent) and owning quality and reliability outcomes, including release planning, dependency management, delivery metrics, and incident management.
- Experience as a site, office, or country leader — or equivalent accountability for a location's culture and operations — including influencing employees and functions that do not report to you across a dotted-line, multi-time-zone model.
- Track record of building and mentoring high-performing engineering teams and leaders, fostering trust and an inclusive culture, with comfort influencing at senior leadership levels.
- Proven record of vendor and service provider negotiations, especially on technology features, roadmaps, and licensing optimization.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent work experience.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience standing up or scaling a new office or global capability center — hiring at pace, establishing culture and operating norms, and building fully accountable product teams rather than augmented capacity.
- Experience leading technology teams in India, with working knowledge of the Bangalore talent market and local employment practices.
- Expertise in modern web frameworks (e.g., React, Angular, Astro, Django), enterprise content management systems (e.g., Adobe Experience Manager, Tridion), and personalization, messaging, and localization platforms (e.g., Adobe Experience Platform, Adobe Journey Optimizer).
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), microservices architectures, and container orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes).
- Experience scaling SRE and observability practices — SLO and error-budget frameworks, monitoring and tracing, and resiliency testing — in a 24x7 consumer-facing environment.
Additional Information:
- Based on site in Bangalore, India, with regular in-office presence, flexibility across time zones for U.S. collaboration, and periodic travel to Disney's U.S. locations.
