Lead Software Engineer

Technology is at the heart of Disney’s past, present, and future. Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is a global organization of engineers, product developers, designers, technologists, data scientists, and more – all working to build and advance the technological backbone for Disney’s media business globally.

The team marries technology with creativity to build world-class products, enhance storytelling, and drive velocity, innovation, and scalability for our businesses. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers. We work with every part of The Walt Disney Company’s media portfolio to advance the technological foundation and consumer media touch points serving millions of people around the world. 

Here are a few reasons why we think you’d love working here:

1. Building the future of Disney’s media: Our Technologists are designing and building the products and platforms that will power our media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.

2. Reach, Scale & Impact: More than ever, Disney’s technology and products serve as a signature doorway for fans' connections with the company’s brands and stories. Disney+. Hulu. ESPN. ABC. ABC News…and many more. These products and brands – and the unmatched stories, storytellers, and events they carry – matter to millions of people globally.

3. Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms, and solve complex and distinctive technical problems.

Media Engineering

Media Engineering is an innovative organization that is focused on providing the best possible video playback experience, art, and metadata to customers around the world, powered by exceptional technology. This strategic work requires streamlining and repurposing technology across different business and distribution channels – including streaming, linear, and theatrical – so that technology can ebb and flow across the needs of the business.

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Technology is looking for a Lead Software Engineer to join the Playback Services team within the Media Engineering organization! Our mission is to build highly available, high throughput services that are crucial to delivering high quality content to our subscribers. We are responsible for the backend of media playback, facilitating media selection, device customization, and antipiracy technologies. If you enjoy streaming media, are interested in live sports and entertainment, or just want to join a fast-growing team that plays a significant role in the core functionality of our streaming products, then this role is for you!

Responsibilities

• Work with a team of engineers building software in a collaborative development process

• Work cross-team to build consensus on approach for delivering projects

• Interface with business stakeholders to understand and refine requirements

• Eliminate ambiguity in projects and communicate direction to engineers to help team members work in parallel

• Build high-performance, stable, scalable systems to be deployed in an enterprise setting

• Lead high-level architecture discussions and planning sessions

• Participate in the code review process by providing feedback on pull requests

• Participate in the on-call rotation, supporting systems and services during  production incidents

• Author and provide feedback on technical proposals and root cause analyses

• Provide mentoring and advice for other engineers

• Establish engineering best practices and standards within the team to drive quality and excellence

• Contribute to the DSS technical community through presentations, tech talks, and  other knowledge-sharing efforts

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience

• 7+ years related experience crafting backend architectures and delivering backend applications in a production environment.

• Validated knowledge of operating large-scale high-availability backend services and JVM services

• Expertise in functional programming patterns and experience building RESTful services (Scala APIs)

• Understanding of async programming models (events, callbacks, promises, async/await) and threading/concurrency

• Strong grasp of computer science fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, databases, etc.) and strong understanding of design patterns and principles

• Experience operating within a Public Cloud Provider (e.g., AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud)

Preferred Qualifications

• Knowledge of AGILE/Scrum practices.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

• Self-learner, independent, excellent problem-solving skills

• Understanding of source control concepts and systems, CI/CD pipelines and exposure to Git

• Experience with build and deployment technologies such as Jenkins and Docker. Experience with messaging technologies (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, SQS, etc.)

• Experience with observability tools for metrics, logging, and monitoring (e.g., Datadog, Splunk, Grafana)

• Knowledge of caching technologies

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in San Francisco, CA is $163,426 to $219,230 per year; in Seattle, WA and New York is $156,292 to $209,660 per year; and in Santa Monica, CA is $149,240 to $200,200 per year. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate’s geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.