Cheryl MacDonald

Engineering leader for client platforms at global streaming scale.

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Summary

I take ambiguous, cross-platform, high-stakes programs from “nobody owns this” to shipped, most recently the client side of migrating Disney+ Hotstar subscribers onto the global Disney+ apps across 20 markets, and a 15-engineer team building a new Disney+ product line. I build the teams and platforms that keep them running. I founded and led Design Engineering, the function that put a single design-token system on every Disney+ device. 14 years across Disney, MLB and BAMTech; people leader since 2022.

Selected Impact

International expansion. Client engineering lead for migrating Disney+ Hotstar subscribers in 20 markets onto the global Disney+ apps across four launches ahead of a fixed legacy-platform shutdown. Took over program-wide client leadership mid-year, presented launch readiness to the company’s executive launch-review board, and reported directly to senior leadership through every launch. Program goals exceeded.
Global language launch. Set the strategy to ship Hebrew, Arabic, Indonesian, Croatian, Thai and Malay worldwide rather than gate by region, bringing localized experiences to millions of users. Delivered full right-to-left support for the live TV guide and extended the launch to Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest.
A new product line. Lead a 15-engineer front-end team with ownership of client architecture, UX platforms and delivery. Organized the team into domains led by senior engineers and negotiated a cross-organization agreement that pulled delivery forward by two quarters.
Design tokens on every device. Negotiated the token delivery platform onto the official engineering roadmap and led its first launch on living-room platforms, completing coverage across web, Apple, Android, Roku and connected-TV devices for the Disney family of brands. Adoption is at 100%.
Design Engineering. Founded and led an engineering function that embedded platform specialists across client teams to implement the design system natively on each device. Created the first joint roadmap between engineering and the design-systems team and delivered the theming and token-automation tooling behind it.

Experience

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology (formerly Disney Streaming / BAMTech)

2017 – Present

Engineering Manager, Client Platform & Design Engineering

2023 – Present

15 direct reports. Programs owned: Hotstar client migration, right-to-left and international expansion, new product line front-end, design-token infrastructure.

Led the international-expansion engineering team and, from spring 2026, overall client execution for the Hotstar migration: cross-team alignment, in-region production validation, post-launch monitoring and global App Store submissions. Introduced quiet early mobile releases with in-country testing, which made each launch smoother than the last.
Authored the decision framework for right-to-left hero-image layout with the design and image-processing teams, landing an AI-based focal-point solution instead of misaligned layouts. Audited typography for Thai, Hebrew and Arabic with the type-design team ahead of launch.
Engineering lead for the second phase of the Disney+ rebrand: managed dozens of engineering intakes with program management and design, and guided new brand typefaces for Hawaiian with the type-design and localization teams.
Mentored one engineer to a senior-level promotion case and another through building an AI integration that gives coding assistants accurate design-token context.
Built internal tools that removed daily friction: an AI-assisted font inspection and visual-diff tool for the localization team, and a browser extension that preserved issue-tracker links through a tooling migration.

Lead Software Engineer, Design Engineering (founding lead)

2022 – 2023

Founding member and lead of Design Engineering; grew the team from 2 to 6 and led all living-room platforms plus tools and infrastructure.
Created the first joint engineering / design-systems roadmap and ran design-to-engineering delivery workshops that produced a device-capability checklist adopted by design and product.

UI Development Lead, Living Room Platform

2019 – 2022

Led the UI team (4 reports) with architectural oversight for a ~30-person platform organization spanning resource-constrained set-top boxes to PlayStation 5. Defined the UI/UX lead role and team structure later adopted across all living-room platforms.
Implemented the platform’s localization framework and led client engineering for the Disney+ Asia-Pacific and EMEA launches, including Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean rendering. Shipped on-device activation for partner devices.
Shaped the type ramp, color palette and animation delivery for the platform’s first design-system foundations in a Rust-based UI stack.

Senior UI Developer, Disney+ Web Player

2017 – 2019

Led foundational UI development for the Disney+ web player on a ground-up React codebase; set the accessibility and architecture standards that carried the player through global launch.

Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM)

2015 – 2017

Team Lead, Design Technology

Founded and managed the Design Technology group bridging product, design and front-end engineering. Primary contributor to a Node.js prototyping platform used to usability-test complex flows across eight device ecosystems before production.

Vertigo Software

2012 – 2015

Senior Creative Developer

Engineering lead and design/product liaison for high-profile consumer applications for clients including Riot Games, Time Warner Cable and the Gates Foundation; front-end architecture and delivery for teams of up to 12 engineers.

Technical Scope

Education

Stanford University · Postgraduate Seminar: Human-Computer Interaction
University of California, Davis · B.S. Evolutionary Anthropology & B.A. Linguistics

Community

W3C Design Tokens Community Group member
Guest lecturer and UX/IA advisor, Sonoma State University and UC Berkeley
Robotics and programming instructor, Girl Scouts (Gold Award)

Beyond Code

Textile construction, garment drafting and vintage industrial design. Pattern-making is systems architecture you can wear.