Jay Donnell
Senior Vice President of Technology
Disney
Jay Donnell is the Senior Vice President, Platform Engineering for the Disney Entertainment & ESPN (DEE) Technology organization. In this role, Jay oversees the teams building and operating world-class technology on a global scale - from streaming products like Disney+ and Hulu, to category-leading digital products and experiences with ABC, ABC News, NatGeo, & ESPN, to core connective technology including identity and commerce platforms. Jay also heads up Disney’s innovative work in advancing personalization, as well as using AR/VR and 3D rendering, bridging studio and digital environments. Prior to this, Jay led Software Engineering for ESPN spanning the ESPN and ESPN Fantasy experiences and real-time platforms that collect, analyze, and distribute data for sports events and news across all channels including television and digital media.
Previously, Jay served as Vice President, Parks Digital Platforms for Disney Parks, Experiences & Products (DPEP), where he oversaw the technology vision, strategy, and execution for key parks platforms and guest experiences. Donnell managed a team of 600+ across engineering, product management, technical operations, and quality assurance. These functions contributed integral elements to the Disney Parks digital experience, including Virtual Queue, the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, and the Walt Disney World and Disneyland apps and websites.
Jay’s Disney journey began in 2001 within Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media, where he oversaw content distribution, commerce platforms, and consumer experiences. The technology Jay oversaw powered the world’s largest licensor of consumer products, the shopDisney and Disney.com websites, the Star Wars website and application, and hundreds of global Disney Store locations.
Prior to Disney, Jay was a research engineer and manager at AT&T Research, where he worked on distributed systems research, large-scale web crawling, and local search engines. Before that, Jay managed technology at early-stage startups, which included an online gaming product that was sold to Full Tilt in 2007. Prior to his career in software engineering he began his career in 1994 with the U.S. Army, where he gained formative experiences operating critical communication networks in high-pressure and adverse conditions. A year of his enlistment was a tour in Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of a NATO-led multinational peace enforcement force. Jay used his G.I. Bill to attend California State University, Los Angeles, where he received a B.S. in Computer Science, Cum Laude.