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Media Player Engineering · The Walt Disney Company

Joshua Mohundro

I build the player you press play on.

For the past five and a half years, I've worked on the browser and connected-TV video player behind Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN. This page is my career, cut into chapters.

2008 / Live

Cold open · Why I build the player

“Dad, can we watch Mulan tonight on my app?”
A little girl on her dad's shoulders, fireworks over the castle

A few months after we launched ads on Disney+ (a hard stretch for all of us), my wife and I were in the crowd at the park watching the fireworks. In front of us, a little girl was falling asleep on her dad's shoulders. Then her favorite character lit up the castle, her head popped up, and she asked that question.

She called it her app. I'd been at Disney about a year, and that's the moment I still come back to when a deadline gets stressful.

When I tell people I write video player code, their eyes glaze over. When I tell them I help them watch their favorite show on Disney+ or Hulu, their faces light up. Everything below is how I got to work on that player.

Chapter 12008 – 2012NC State University
Research In Motion (BlackBerry)

Learning to break things on purpose

I studied Computer Science at NC State, graduating in December 2012. For more than three years, I was a TA for E 115, the course every incoming engineering student takes to get comfortable with the college's computing environment.

My first industry work was two co-op rotations at Research In Motion as a software test specialist on BlackBerry. I analyzed requirements for new features, designed and ran test cases, and learned how much has to go right before a product reaches someone's hands.

Carried forwardA tester's instinct. Today the "device" is millions of living rooms.

Chapter 22012 – 2015Prometheus Group
Intern → Associate Software Engineer

Building for the person on the other end

At Prometheus Group I started as a development intern on the Tool Crib Manager project, then joined full-time, building SAP solutions, mainly a master data governance product.

The job put me in regular contact with customers. I saw a product go from idea to concept to sale to implementation, and I learned that the code is only one part of shipping something people rely on.

Carried forwardTalking to the people who use the thing.

Chapter 32015 – 2016NetApp
Software Engineer II

Going all in on JavaScript

On NetApp's SE Productivity Tools team I built web apps that the pre-sales organization used to sell NetApp products. My main project was a configurator that let sales engineers quickly spec out complex data systems.

It was an end-to-end JavaScript application, Node, Hapi.js, and React, run with real DevOps discipline. That's where the web became my home platform.

Carried forwardThe web stack the player runs on and the habit of automating everything.

Chapter 42016 – 2018Capital One
Software Engineer → Senior Full Stack Engineer
University of Richmond, Instructor

Changing how a team works

At Capital One I helped migrate an on-prem .NET agent-servicing app to AWS-backed Node.js microservices with an Angular UI. I pushed the team toward test-driven development and automated deployments, and later worked on an RPA project and the microsite for Eno, Capital One's texting assistant.

As a senior engineer I standardized our workflow and automated manual processes so one team could run five projects at once, while onboarding and mentoring newer engineers as we staffed up.

On the side, I taught the inaugural University of Richmond web development bootcamp. Along with my TAs, I helped 30+ students go from novice programmers to starting careers in web development.

Carried forwardCode quality as team culture, and teaching as part of the job.

Chapter 52018 – 2021GE Digital, Staff Software Engineer
Lenovo, Senior Software Engineer

Owning the platform and growing the team

At GE Digital I helped rebuild the internal single sign-on system around user and application risk profiles, deployed entirely through automation to AWS. I was one of the owners of our AWS environment: VPCs, user controls, and security delegation with proper separation of duties.

At Lenovo I was the technical lead on a next-generation contract management system responsible for more than $230 million in yearly revenue. I architected it to be cloud native on AWS, pushed for CI/CD from day one (Jenkins, Terraform, Docker, and ECS), and helped move the team from waterfall to agile. I interviewed, onboarded, and mentored engineers as the team grew from 3 to 12 engineers, and worked with the security org to adopt IAM best practices.

Carried forwardSystems thinking at scale and leading without waiting for the title.

Chapter 6 · Now streamingMay 2021 – present

The playerbehind Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN

Live

Since 2021, I've worked on the video player that runs in the browser and on connected TVs at Disney. My team has rebuilt it from the ground up more than once, and each rebuild let us add something new: live playback, inserted ads, and then live inserted ads.

It also let us bring Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, ABC, and linear brands like FX together on a single player. Every earlier chapter shows up here: the tester's paranoia, the customer focus, the web stack, the automation, and the experience growing a team.

2021 – 2023Sr Software Engineer, Video Platform Engineering
2023 – 2024Sr Software Engineer, Media Player Engineering
2024 – nowLead Software Engineer, Media Player Engineering
80+
branded sites and apps run on the player
5
brands on one player: Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, ABC, and FX
0
incidents on the new player launch that enabled ads on Disney+
−0.2%
video playback failures across the board while adding in-stream promos

Episodes

Work I've led
  1. ADS

    Ads come to Disney+

    Led the launch of a new player that enabled ads on Disney+, with zero incidents.

  2. SLUG

    Dynamic slugs DEG EnTech Award

    Led the player changes to support dynamic slugs. We shipped ahead of schedule and set the player up for future dynamic insertion, and the effort won a DEG EnTech Award.

  3. PROMO

    Promos inside the stream

    Led the player work for dynamically inserted in-stream promos, increasing engagement while cutting video playback failures by 0.2% across the board.

  4. AUD · CC

    Your language, or the next best one

    Led a rework of how the player picks audio and subtitle languages, and how it falls back when your preferred language isn't available.

  5. ONE PLAYER

    One player for every brand

    Successive rebuilds brought Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, ABC, and FX onto one player that now powers 80+ branded sites and apps, including a large share of watch hours on Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN.

  6. LIVE

    The Super Bowl Up next

    In February 2027, the Super Bowl will stream on Disney+ and the ESPN app. Code I've worked on will help bring it to millions of homes, and we're doing everything we can to make playback great.

Plays on Samsung TizenLG webOSDesktop browsersConnected TVs
Up next

Let's talk streaming.

I like hard playback problems, teams that care about craft, and work that ends up in someone's living room. The best way to reach me is through LinkedIn.

Connect on LinkedIn

Education

B.S. Computer Science
North Carolina State University, 2012

Teaching

Instructor, University of Richmond web development bootcamp
TA, NC State E 115

Focus

Video streaming and web media players, ad insertion, live streaming, connected TV (Samsung Tizen, LG webOS), JavaScript, Node.js, React, AWS

Based in

Raleigh, North Carolina