Manager, 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: MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, NOSQL(MONGO, Cassandra) and Snowflake for TWDC.  These workloads are running in all major CSPs as well as on premises hosting environments.  This team manages the data platforms that operate some of the more critical Disney applications and services.

Responsibilities of Role:

• Lead, build and mentor a high-performing team of Database Reliability Engineers (DBREs) responsible for managing complex systems, infrastructure, and applications.

• Define and communicate a clear vision and mission for the DBRE team, fostering a culture of ownership, reliability, technical excellence, and DevOps best practices.

• Architect, plan, and oversee implementation of robust database infrastructure—across on-premise, cloud, and hybrid environments.

• Evaluate and adopt new database technologies, tools, and automation platforms.

• Design and review database solutions for backup, high availability (HA), disaster recovery (DR), and performance optimization.

• Lead capacity planning, performance tuning, and proactive issue resolution to ensure system reliability and scalability.

• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams including application engineering, cloud DevOps, and security.

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

• Provide technical analysis, effort and cost estimation, and system design recommendations.

• Coordinate project schedules, resource planning, and delivery milestones for database upgrades and implementations.

• Represent the DBRE function in executive and technical forums; prepare and deliver high-quality presentations for senior stakeholders.

• Support change management and communication efforts related to infrastructure and database projects.

• Develop and manage team budgets, including software licensing and infrastructure costs.

• Promote a culture of continuous improvement, customer focus, and engineering excellence.

Must Haves:

• 8+ years of hands-on experience with major DBMS platforms including:
  MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Snowflake

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

• Demonstrated success in leading and developing technical teams in fast-paced, matrixed environments.

• Strong verbal and written communication skills, including experience presenting to executive leadership.

• Proficiency in one or more programming/scripting languages: Python, Go, Java, C++, or Ruby.

• Experience with configuration management and automation tools such as:
  Ansible, Chef, Puppet, or SaltStack

• Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code tools such as:
  Terraform or AWS CloudFormation

• Experience managing multi-cloud or hybrid environments, including private and public hosting platforms.

• Understanding of web application infrastructure and development toolchains.

• Proven ability to manage and optimize budgets.

Nice To Haves:

• Experience with additional DBMS platforms: MS SQL Server, IBM DB2

• Working knowledge of both Linux and Windows-based server environments

• Familiarity with container orchestration using Kubernetes

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in New York and Washington is $145,400 - $195,000 per year and in California is $138,900 - $186,200 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.