Sr. Database Engineer, SQL Server

Role Location:

This is an on-site role requiring 4 days in-person at designated office location.

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology

Technology is at the heart of Disney’s past, present, and future. 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.

Here are a few reasons why we think you’d love working here:

Building the future of Disney’s media: Our Technologists are designing and building the products and platforms that will power our media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come. Reach, Scale & Impact: More than ever, Disney’s technology and products serve as a signature doorway for fans' connections with the company’s brands and stories. Disney+. Hulu. ESPN. ABC. ABC News…and many more. These products and brands – and the unmatched stories, storytellers, and events they carry – matter to millions of people globally. Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms, and solve complex and distinctive technical problems.

Product Engineering is a unified team responsible for the engineering of Disney Entertainment & ESPN digital and streaming products and platforms. This includes product engineering, media engineering, quality assurance, engineering behind personalization, commerce, lifecycle, and identity.

The individual in this position will join the Data Stores team in an exciting and fast-paced environment where they will help build and maintain highly available relational database systems operating across multiple cloud and on-premise environments. These databases support many of the systems powering DEEP&T’s digital media supply chain and consumer facing products.

Job Summary:

Join DEEP&T as a Senior Reliability Engineer, where you will analyze, design, program, debug, and modify software enhancements and new products for use in local, networked, cloud-based, or Internet-related computer programs. This role delivers large or highly complex software programs and systems that are critical to the organization’s technology platforms and commercial applications.

By leveraging in-depth knowledge of current programming languages and technologies, the Senior Reliability Engineer will write code, complete programming tasks, and perform testing and debugging of applications. The individual will interact with users to define system requirements and necessary modifications, conceive and implement software components, fixes, enhancements, and new systems. Their work directly impacts the organization by driving improvements in product quality, operational efficiency, and technical innovation, influencing future projects and technical direction

We’re looking for an individual who can apply software engineering principles to database engineering and administration to build processes and automation to help deliver infrastructure faster, safer, more consistently, and with the right level of observability required to operate at scale.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Responsible for building, deploying, and ensuring all DEEP&T database infrastructure is available 24/7/365.
• Leverage software development and automation to design, modernize, and deliver database infrastructure.
• Participates in setting the architectural direction for database platforms and projects.
• Manage multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced, deadline-oriented environment.
• Analyze, design, and deploy fault-tolerant, distributed, and highly available database infrastructure.
• Proactively plan and implement infrastructure changes through capacity forecasting, software release cycles, and right sizing.
• Provide database expertise through performance tuning, troubleshooting and administration.
• Develop, enhance, and adhere to engineering and administration standards.
• Develop automation and tooling to increase operational efficiency while ensuring system reliability & security.
• Build infrastructure and systems for scalability, resiliency, availability, and recovery through infrastructure as code and configuration management.
• Provide relevant insights of data store infrastructure through metrics, monitoring, and alerting.
• Maintain thorough and well‑written documentation.
• Participate in live event support and on‑call rotation.
• May provide oversight and direction to junior team members.
• Builds relationships with engineering teams and leads.

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic Experience

• Bachelor's degree, preferably in computer science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 5+ years of related work experience with Microsoft SQL Server, Amazon RDS for SQL Server, Azure SQL, and Azure SQL MI.
• Fundamental understanding of Microsoft SQL Server database internals.
• Experience working in Agile software development.
• Experience with source control management tools (Git, GitLab, GitHub).
• Intermediate to advanced level of expertise in one or more programming languages such as Python, Java, or Go.
• General understanding and experience with Windows operating system, network, and containers.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Experience designing and deploying fault-tolerant, distributed, and highly available database infrastructure.
• Experience in database availability monitoring and status reporting using native monitoring tools.
• Well-versed in SQL Server backup, restore, and recovery strategies.
• Experience keeping a large environment compliant by deploying SQL Server patches and upgrades.
• Experience with disaster recovery planning and implementation.
• Carries out assignments with little coaching or guidance from others.

Preferred Experience

• Experience operating within a database reliability engineering (DRE) and/or systems reliability engineering (SRE) role.
• Experience running, deploying, and maintaining production systems in Azure and Amazon Web Services.
• Experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation).
• Experience building a proper path to production leveraging multiple lifecycles, testing, integration, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience with the configuration and implementation of SQL Server Always On availability groups.
• Experience with configuration management (Ansible, Chef).
• Comfortable collaborating with cross-functional teams providing guidance in SQL Server best practices.
• Experience with proactively identifying problems/areas of improvement and designing creative solutions to successfully remediate issues.

#disneytech

The hiring range for this position in Bristol, CT is $144,100.00 to $193,200.00 and in New York, NY is $150,900.00 to $202,400.00 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.

Disclaimer

This position is with Disney Entertainment & Sports LLC, which is part of a business we call Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology.

Disney Entertainment & Sports LLC is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Disney champions a business environment where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best stories and be relevant in a constantly evolving world.

DISABILITY ACCOMMODATION FOR EMPLOYMENT APPLICATIONS

The Walt Disney Company and its Affiliated Companies are Equal Employment Opportunity employers and welcome all job seekers including individuals with disabilities and veterans with disabilities. If you have a disability and believe you need a reasonable accommodation in order to search for a job opening or apply for a position, visit the Disney candidate disability accommodations FAQs ( . We will only respond to those requests that are related to the accessibility of the online application system due to a disability.

The Walt Disney Company is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Disney fosters a business culture where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best stories and be relevant in a rapidly changing world.