Peter Gluck

About

Engineering leader and former CTO/Disney|ABC engineering manager who built white-label mobile app architecture that supported a branded app and successful exit, and later scaled Disney Channel brand app teams across iOS/Android/web and major OTT platforms. Led kid-safety architecture for DisneyNOW (“Junior mode” with PIN) and partnered with product/legal on COPPA compliance, emphasizing maintainable tech choices and strong execution processes.

Experience

Education

Key Strengths

• Defined and executed a white-label mobile app architecture aligned to business strategy; enabled a branded variant that led to a successful exit
• Scaled engineering org from 3 to 11 in-house engineers and ~10 to ~20 offshore developers across multi-platform app portfolio
• Multi-platform delivery leadership across mobile, web, and OTT/CTV ecosystems (Roku, FireTV, AppleTV, Xbox, Chromecast, Kindle)
• Pragmatic technology selection focused on maintainability and broad developer availability (avoids unproven tech)
• Established quality processes: coding standards, regular code reviews, and evolving branching/merging practices
• Strong cross-functional alignment and expectation management between design and engineering to control complexity and timelines
• Designed kid-safety architecture ('Junior mode' with PIN) enabling a single integrated DisneyNOW app while protecting younger audiences
• Experience partnering with product and legal to ensure COPPA/privacy compliance for children's content

Reference Highlights

• Exceptional leadership ("most capable I have ever seen")
• Strong combination of hard skills and soft skills
• World-class at bringing teams, plans, and software together
• Effective at aligning technology to business outcomes
• Built an engineering team from scratch
• Unifies globally distributed teams
• Makes junior team members feel valued while challenging them
• Balances speed of delivery with system stability
• Keeps egos in check; fosters low-ego culture
• Team-building and culture-building effectiveness
• Calm under pressure; hard to stress
• Healthy perspective; self-worth not tied to project outcomes
• Drives innovation through multi-technology integration
• Delivered scaled, efficient, reliable system connecting 1,000 nonprofits and 400,000 small businesses
• Thoughtful and effective communicator
• Keeps team and stakeholders well informed
• Hands-on technical leader
• Aligns technical decisions with business needs
• Strong architectural decision-making
• Streamlined development and maintenance via tooling choices
• Delivered a new multi-platform product quickly (~6 months)
• High-quality code focus
• Thorough code reviews
• Strong documentation of critical processes
• Successfully drove adoption of process changes despite resistance
• Enabled smooth handoff to offshore maintenance teams
• Reliable under pressure; willing to put in hours to meet deadlines
• Works well both collaboratively and independently
• Trusted to make important decisions and communicate rationale
• Maintains team structure during high-pressure periods (documentation, tickets)
• Early adopter of AI tools; boosted team productivity
• Go-to resource for AI advice
• Contributes detailed insights to product direction discussions
• Innovative; proposed and implemented a low-cost API test platform
• Recognized for hackathon project
• Excellent at aligning technology work to business goals
• Instrumental in driving thin client implementation
• Strong innovator (hackathon contributions)
• Effective at reducing operating and integration costs
• Collaborative leadership style
• Strong mentor to junior engineers
• Calm under pressure
• Takes lead to diagnose and resolve release/build issues
• Delivers results in high-pressure situations
• Improves overall technology approach and product solution
• Very effective leader
• Strong business understanding
• Able to implement technology to meet business needs
• Built and scaled engineering org from a few engineers to three teams
• Delivered results across web, iOS, and Android
• Composed under pressure
• Goal-focused
• Reliable in meeting immovable launch deadlines