Disney Cuts Tech and HR Jobs After Hiring a Technology Chief

Disney began a new round of layoffs on Tuesday, September 29, cutting a couple of hundred jobs in technology and human resources. The studio bench and the TV group were left standing. The cuts landed 11 days after CEO Josh D’Amaro named the company’s first chief technology officer.

On that same Friday, September 18, the chief legal officer told his department it would become much smaller and would automate work with new tools. The people leaving this round sit in the functions that memo and that hire both describe.

A Couple Hundred Jobs Land on Tech and HR

People familiar with the reductions said the September 29 round is smaller than the two earlier 2026 waves, and that it is concentrated in shared corporate functions rather than in film or series production. Walt Disney Studios is primarily exempt. Disney Entertainment Television is not part of this round, though a larger rebuild of that group is still expected under chair Debra OConnell.

The involuntary cuts followed a voluntary early retirement offer for employees at director level and above who are 50 or older and have at least 10 years at the company. That window closed after a cooling-off period that ended the weekend before Tuesday. Offers of that kind are usually the step that comes right before forced reductions.

Disney has not issued a public statement on the September 29 cuts. In an August 5 letter to shareholders, D’Amaro and chief financial officer Hugh Johnston wrote that they were “highly focused on reducing costs across the enterprise to create incremental capacity to invest for growth” and were looking at “reductions in labor and SG&A.” They added, “We are mid-stream in this work and will provide future updates on our progress.”

THE 2026 CUTS AGAINST IGER’S TALLY

On the entertainment side of the company, the fact that landed first was the exemption. Film and TV production benches were left in place on Tuesday, which is the detail animation and series staff asked about before they asked how many people in tech were going.

Disney Named Its First Technology Chief on a Friday

D’Amaro told staff on September 18 that Karandeep Anand would join on October 2 in a newly created chief technology officer role, reporting directly to the CEO. Anand most recently ran Character.AI. He earlier led product at Brex, ran ads and business products at Meta, and spent 15 years at Microsoft, including work on Azure. A number of Character.AI engineers are expected to come with him.

The job covers enterprise technology, infrastructure, data and AI platforms, product, and engineering, working across the segment tech teams. That is the same map as the departments now losing people.

Karandeep brings a rare mix of experience across infrastructure, consumer technology and AI, and will be a vital addition to Disney’s senior leadership team as we further our three priorities: great storytelling as our North Star, technology in service of creativity, and operating as One Disney.

Josh D’Amaro, Chief Executive Officer, Disney newsroom announcement

D’Amaro also said Anand “shares our belief that technology creates the most value when it helps people do their best work.” Anand starts three days after the tech-and-HR round. He will oversee groups that just got smaller, while a slice of his own former startup staff walks in behind him.

Gutierrez Told Legal It Will Get Smaller

Horacio Gutierrez, senior executive vice president and chief legal and global affairs officer, sent his own note at noon that Friday to Legal and Global Affairs, a group of just under 1,000 people worldwide. He described a rebuild he called LGA 2.0 and asked how the department should “reinvent itself to best serve the Disney of tomorrow.”

He wrote that legal, government relations, and operations “are going through their own reinvention as technology reshapes how work gets done.” He said he was “taking a dispassionate look at every aspect of how we do our work, so we can do it in a more efficient and cost-effective manner.”

The memo never used the words artificial intelligence. Staff read it that way anyway, and it moved well beyond the legal group. Unspecified LGA reductions are not part of the September 29 tech-and-HR round. They are a separate track that has not yet been counted in public.

HOW GUTIERREZ SAID THE WORK WILL CHANGE

• Headcount: “LGA will be a much smaller organization than it is today, and some of you will personally be affected by decisions we make in this process.”
• Hard choices: He warned of “hard choices about where and how we deploy our resources and investments, including our staffing investments.”
• Automation: New models will include “automating certain workflows by leveraging the latest technologies.”
• Self-service and vendors: He named self-service tools, alternative legal providers, expanded shared services, and outsourcing.
• Where the money goes: “When teams work smarter, Disney can serve more fans at lower costs, freeing up capital to reinvest in the content, guest experiences, and technology infrastructure that keep the company out in front.”

That last line puts parks, stories, and tech infrastructure on the keep pile. The staffing investments sit on the other side of the ledger.

Who Took the April and July Cuts?

D’Amaro took over on March 18 at the annual meeting, becoming the ninth chief executive in company history. About a month later he authorized his first large reduction, about 1,000 jobs. Marketing took the heaviest hit after the company folded brand work under chief marketing and brand officer Asad Ayaz. Marvel lost people in film and television production, comics, franchise, finance, and legal, after a thinner slate. Entire publicity units, including home-entertainment PR, were taken out. Pixar was spared in that wave.

In an April note to staff, D’Amaro wrote that the company had spent months looking at how to “streamline our operations” and how to build “a more agile and technologically-enabled workforce to meet tomorrow’s needs.” He also wrote that the decisions were “not a reflection of their contributions, or of the overall strength of the company,” and that they reflected “our continual evaluation of how to more effectively manage our resources and reinvest in our businesses.”

The July wave, announced on July 21, cut several hundred more jobs. A Disney spokesperson said the changes were “part of our continual evaluation of how we manage resources and reinvest across the company as our industry continues to evolve.” D’Amaro was not expected to send another staff note that day.

Pixar absorbed the studio share. A notice filed with California employment regulators said 108 jobs at the Emeryville campus, 1200 Park Ave., would end on September 26. Those roles were concentrated in production and operations. Disney Entertainment Television lost just under 100 jobs in July, most of them at National Geographic’s cable network, editorial, and operations, plus about a dozen ABC News staffers. ESPN cuts were tied to the NFL Network integration. Toy Story 5 was still climbing toward $1 billion at the box office when those Pixar notices went out.

Parks Still Employ Most of the Company

D’Amaro, 54, is a 28-year company veteran who joined in 1998 at Disneyland Resort and had run Disney Experiences since 2020. The board elected him on February 3, 2026, in a unanimous vote, effective March 18. Dana Walden, who had been co-chair of Disney Entertainment, became president and chief creative officer the same day. Bob Iger stays as senior adviser and a director until he leaves the company on December 31, 2026.

Experiences is the segment D’Amaro already knew how to run. In fiscal 2025 it took in $36 billion in revenue and counted 185,000 Cast Members and employees worldwide across 12 theme parks and 57 resort hotels, plus cruise, vacation club, Imagineering, and consumer products. Board chair James Gorman called him “the architect of the largest global expansion in Disney Experiences history” when the succession was announced.

WHO WORKS AT DISNEY

• Total headcount: 231,000 employees at the end of fiscal 2025.
• Where they sit: 172,000 in the United States and 59,000 elsewhere.
• Parks share: Experiences alone accounted for 185,000 of those 231,000 people.
• Part-time and seasonal: 16% of the workforce is part-time and another 8% is seasonal, mostly in parks and resorts.

The 2026 reductions have been aimed at entertainment, ESPN, and corporate groups, not at the parks payroll that still holds most of the names on the books. D’Amaro told shareholders on his first day that the next chapter would be “world-class creativity, enhanced by technology.” The enhancement is being staffed at the top and thinned in the ranks.

Television Waits for Debra OConnell

OConnell became chair of Disney Entertainment Television on March 16, two days before the CEO handoff, in a new role created when Walden set her entertainment team. Her brief covers ABC Entertainment, Disney Branded Television, Hulu Originals, National Geographic Content, creative for 20th Television and 20th Television Animation, ABC News, and the owned TV stations.

On September 17, the day before the Gutierrez memo and the Anand hire, Adam Smith was named sole chairman of direct-to-consumer for Disney Entertainment, overseeing Disney+ and Hulu product, engineering, ad tech, and programming. Joe Earley, who had shared that job, moved to OConnell’s group as president of television franchise and content strategy. Eric Schrier left his international-originals post for a producing deal. Those moves fed talk of a larger TV rebuild. Tuesday’s list did not include that group.

WHAT WE KNOW

• This round: A couple of hundred jobs in tech and HR, with the motion picture studio primarily exempt and DET not included.
• Legal track: LGA was told on September 18 it will be much smaller; those cuts are not the September 29 list.
• The new tech office: Anand starts October 2, reporting to D’Amaro, with some Character.AI staff expected to join.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• TV timing: A major DET restructuring under OConnell is expected, with no public date or headcount.
• LGA count: Gutierrez did not attach a number to “much smaller.”
• Further labor cuts: The August 5 letter said the company was mid-stream on labor and SG&A reductions and would update later.

Until those updates arrive, the pattern for 2026 is already on paper. Marketing and Marvel went in April. Pixar and National Geographic went in July. Tech and HR went on September 29. Television is the group that has been told to wait.

Iger Already Cut 8,000 Jobs for $7.5 Billion

The scale still sits under the last Iger run. In February 2023, after he returned as CEO, Iger told investors Disney would cut about 7,000 jobs and $5.5 billion in costs as part of a companywide rebuild. Successive rounds through 2025 took the total to some 8,000 workers and $7.5 billion in savings, above the first forecasts.

D’Amaro’s three waves this year are smaller than that 2023 plan on their own. Stacked on the 8,000, they keep taking people out of the same corporate and entertainment layers while Experiences remains the large employer. Iger, in a September interview after he had already left the CEO job, said he wrote D’Amaro a six-page letter and left it in the desk, and that the test for a successor was whether that person could handle “a real crisis” in a “reasonable and sane and steady” way.

Anand reports to work on October 2. The legal department is still waiting for the smaller org chart Gutierrez described. Television’s rebuild has been discussed for months and did not arrive with Tuesday’s list. The jobs that did arrive on that list were in tech and HR.