Lead Systems Engineer

At Disney Experiences Technology, we design and deliver more than 400 digital and physical products that bring Disney stories to life in unexpected ways. From theme parks and resorts to cruise ships and beyond, our global team of technologists, designers, and innovators creates seamless, immersive experiences that delight millions of Guests and Cast Members around the world.

The Disney Signature Experiences team delivers innovative technology solutions across Disney Cruise Line, Disney Vacation Club, and our global tour businesses. We support Guest and Crew experiences at sea, enable commercial growth through digital platforms, and lead the segment’s data strategy. With a strong focus on reliability, scalability, and strategic expansion, we build the systems that support immersive experiences and unlock new opportunities for growth.

Disney Cruise Line – This role is on the Disney Cruise Line team, which delivers shipboard Guest and Crew systems, commercial platforms, web and app experiences, and infrastructure operations that support seamless journeys at sea.

The Role:

The Lead Systems Engineer on the DCL New Build Technology team provides technical leadership and oversight for the design, deployment, configuration, and support of enterprise infrastructure environments onboard Disney Cruise Line vessels and within New Build staging facilities. This role is responsible for the successful delivery and operational readiness of compute, storage, virtualization, backup, and supporting infrastructure platforms while ensuring high availability, security, and operational excellence.

The Lead Systems Engineer serves as the primary escalation point for complex infrastructure issues, leads troubleshooting and root cause analysis efforts, coordinates vendor engagement, and partners extensively with Infrastructure Operations, shipside IT Operations, Network Engineering, Application Support teams, and other technology groups across the Disney Cruise Line organization. This position ensures that infrastructure platforms are engineered, deployed, and maintained according to enterprise standards with a strong focus on lifecycle management, resiliency, automation, security, and operational support.

Responsibilities

• Provides lead level technical guidance to systems engineers and infrastructure specialists; guiding technical decision-making and engineering best practices
• Acts as the primary escalation point for complex compute, storage, virtualization, and infrastructure issues, leading troubleshooting efforts and root cause analysis activities.
• Establishes and maintains technical standards, operational procedures, and engineering best practices across server, storage, virtualization, backup, and infrastructure platforms.
• Leads infrastructure deployment activities for onboard datacenters, shoreside staging facilities, and new vessel construction projects.
• Coordinates closely with Infrastructure Operations and shipside IT Operations teams to ensure smooth transition of systems into production and ongoing operational support.
• Owns vendor relationships for infrastructure hardware, software, support contracts, and maintenance services.
• Designs, deploys, and maintains enterprise server, storage, virtualization, backup, and hyperconverged infrastructure platforms supporting business-critical applications.
• Coordinates and executes preventative maintenance activities during the build phase, including firmware upgrades, platform patching, and helps define lifecycle management activities while minimizing operational impact.
• Oversees day-to-day operational support activities during the build, including incident management, problem resolution, change implementation, capacity planning, and platform optimization.
• Maintains comprehensive monitoring and alerting strategies across infrastructure platforms to proactively identify and resolve issues before impacting deployment or commissioning.
• Ensures infrastructure deployments adhere to Disney GIS security standards, hardening requirements, and enterprise architecture guidelines.
• Evaluates emerging technologies and develops strategic recommendations for next-generation compute, storage, virtualization, backup, and infrastructure solutions.
• Develops repeatable, automated deployment processes to improve consistency, reliability, and operational efficiency.
• Provides technical guidance and expert consultation to peers, project teams, and internal customers.
• 25% Travel

Required Qualifications

• 7+ years of infrastructure engineering experience supporting enterprise server, storage, virtualization, and datacenter technologies. (Lead-level expectation derived from both positions.
• Experience with network topography, design and infrastructure.
• Extensive experience with enterprise virtualization platforms including VMware vSphere, VMware Cloud Foundation, Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI), and clustered environments.
• Experience with enterprise storage technologies including SAN, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and software-defined storage platforms.
• Strong troubleshooting, incident management, and root cause analysis skills within complex infrastructure environments.
• Experience coordinating operational activities across engineering, operations, vendors, and support organizations.
• Experience supporting Windows and Linux server operating systems.

Preferred Qualifications

• Certification and/or extensive experience with VMware vSphere, VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), VxRail, Cisco UCS, Dell PowerEdge platforms, Pure Storage, NetApp, Rubrik, and enterprise backup technologies.
• Experience deploying and supporting highly available infrastructure platforms in mission-critical environments.
• Experience supporting maritime, hospitality, transportation, or distributed enterprise environments.

Required Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or equivalent experience

#TECHATDISNEY

The hiring range for this position in Orlando, FL is $123,100 to $165,100 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.