Job Description

As Director of Interactive Experiences, you will lead the development of interactive digital experiences including gaming, AR / VR, and digital/physical interactivity within Disney Parks, Disney Cruise Lines, and at home. You will be an experienced, hands-on development leader with strong technical skills and have experience with technologies such as Unity or Unreal. Experience with delivering experiences on a large scale, specifically mobile applications will be an important aspect of this role. As part of the responsibilities, you will establish technology strategy, funding, roadmap, and build out the team culture. With aptitude for learning, you’ll create a culture of “test and learn” by setting up a framework to deliver and measure Guest & Cast feedback. Leading a team of developers and quality engineers, you’ll be responsible for developing interactive experiences, games, game containers, and supporting platform components. Partnering with the creative teams around you, including Walt Disney Imagineering, will be key to accomplishing this mission.

Role and Responsibilities:

• Define and deliver core capabilities supporting physical / digital storytelling experiences with innovative new technologies
• Define and deliver interactive experiences within the DPEP digital ecosystem and other future opportunities within Disney enterprise
• Recruit, lead, and manage a talented development team with strong Unity, Unreal, game, AR, and VR development experience
• Lead development of mobile apps including iOS (Swift) / Android (Kotlin) and Flutter technology
• Design and manage high performance serverless Google Cloud Platform environment and datastores
• Deliver estimates, budgets, and timelines to business partners based on high level user stories, proposed scope, and operational costs
• Deliver seamless user experience blended with overall guest experience in mobile apps, web sites, and other interactive digital experiences
• Ensure compliance and drive best practices for online protection protocols (COPPA) and privacy of guest data
• Collaborate with partner organizations to build and deliver experiences
• Create and achieve OKRs including guest facing as well as internal measurements
• The Director role establishes standards and procedures, setting technology directions, leading multiple managers, hiring team members, vendor negotiations, and managing budgets.

Experience and Qualifications:

• Deep understanding of VR/AR & gaming technology including specific focus operating in hostile network conditions (offline mode)
• Detail oriented with strong sense of product management, project management, and ability to interact with corporate partners and stakeholders
• Familiar with Agile DevOps methodology and practices
• Experience developing native mobile apps, web experiences, and VR wearables
• Maintain operational excellence of your runtime environments achieving 99.9% uptime and key KPI operational targets
• Deep interest in the latest developments, industry trends, and best practices for building games / VR / AR experiences
• Bachelor degree in Computer Science, Technology, or equivalent
• 10+ years of experience in the interactive gaming industry, including experience with real-time interactive gaming platforms
• 3+ years of experience in creating real-time 3D content
• Development experience & familiarity with Flutter, DART, Swift, Kotlin, C, C#, Java or NodeJS
• Expert level experience with cloud native technologies including Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, especially the ability to articulate advanced technical topics to both technical and non-technical staff
• Experience leading and motivating teams; demonstrated track record of building cohesive and high performing teams
• Ability to lead technical teams to deliver projects on time and within budget with cadence and disciplines
• Ability to work in dynamic fast-paced environment
• Hands-on, detail oriented, positive, collaborative, can-do approach

Preferred Qualifications:

• Advanced degree (or equivalent experience) in the field of Technology/Computer Science
• 5 years of experience working with Unity and/or other real-time interactive gaming platforms