Lead Software Engineer

About the Role and Team

Reporting to the Engineering Manager within Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, this role is an exciting opportunity to shape the future of digital entertainment. As a Lead Android Engineer, you will build world-class applications enjoyed by millions on platforms such as Disney+ and Star+. You’ll work across phones, tablets, and TVs to deliver highly scalable, immersive experiences for global audiences.

You’ll bring deep technical expertise in Android development, along with leadership qualities that empower teams, enhance processes, and drive innovation. The ideal candidate will possess exceptional Kotlin proficiency, modern architectural practices, and a collaborative spirit.

You will play a key role in maintaining code quality, leading projects from conception to release, and mentoring engineers—all while contributing to one of the most iconic media and technology companies in the world.

What You Will Do

Key Responsibilities

• Design and implement high-quality, scalable features in Kotlin across a wide variety of Android devices including mobile, tablet, and TV form factors.

• Lead large-scale projects from concept to deployment, owning the full software development lifecycle.

• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams including product, design, QA, and backend services to ensure seamless user experiences.

• Maintain high standards of software quality through code reviews, unit tests, integration tests, and best development practices.

• Take ownership of live production issues, remote configuration, and CI/CD automation, ensuring optimal app performance and reliability.

• Advocate for architectural best practices (MVI/MVVM) and maintain modular, testable, and efficient codebases.

• Proactively identify technical challenges, implement robust solutions, and share learnings across the team.

• Coach and mentor junior engineers to support their technical growth and ensure team productivity.

• Drive innovation by applying the latest in Android libraries, tools, and development techniques to enhance audience experience.

• Ensure app performance through benchmarking, tracing, threading optimization, and analysis with tools like Perfetto and Android Profiler.

• Contribute to the continuous improvement of team workflows, build pipelines, and engineering standards.

Other General Activities

• Engage in team planning, sprint ceremonies, and stakeholder meetings.

• Participate in the development of release strategies, monitoring, and remote configuration systems.

• Support cross-team initiatives to evolve internal tools, frameworks, and documentation.

• Provide input on long-term architectural decisions and technical roadmaps.

• Share knowledge by contributing to design documents, wikis, and training sessions.

• Remain up to date with the latest trends in Android and mobile development.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• 7+ years of production-level experience with Kotlin and Android SDK.

• Expertise in reactive programming, dependency injection (Dagger 2 / Hilt), and modern Android architecture (MVI/MVVM).

• Demonstrated success leading Android projects through full development cycles.

• Strong collaboration and communication skills across technical and non-technical teams.

• Deep understanding of Android fundamentals including Activity/Fragment lifecycles, custom views, and threading.

• Well-versed in common Android libraries (RxJava, Jetpack, Groupie, etc.).

• Familiarity with CI/CD tools (Jenkins, GitHub Actions) and release management.

• Proven ability to resolve production issues at scale and ensure application reliability.

• Experience coaching, mentoring, and enabling team growth.

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced knowledge of Gradle including custom tasks and convention plugins.

• Familiarity with annotation processing (KAPT, KSP) and modularized codebases.

• Experience developing for Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, and supporting various form factors.

• Deep knowledge of app performance tooling (benchmarking, threading, tracing).

• Exposure to streaming video technologies, codecs, and DRM systems.

Additional Information

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology is where innovation meets imagination. Join a team building the future of streaming and shaping magical experiences for hundreds of millions around the world. This role is full-time and typically office-based, with flexibility depending on team and location.

The Walt Disney Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We strive to be a diverse workforce that is representative of our audiences, and where all can thrive and belong. Disney is committed to forming a team that includes and respects a variety of voices, identities, backgrounds, experiences and perspectives.