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:

• 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.

• 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. 

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

Product Engineering is a unified team responsible for the engineering of Disney Entertainment & ESPN digital and streaming products and platforms. This includes product engineering, media engineering, quality assurance, engineering behind personalization, commerce, lifecycle, and identity.

As a Lead Software Engineer on the Core Infrastructure Automation team, you will be responsible for leading the effort and participating in the development and maintenance of infrastructure automation tools. You will spend time collaborating with other software engineers, infrastructure design engineers and network engineers to research and architect solutions that automate and facilitate infrastructure deployment.

Responsibilities

• Propose and implement technical solutions for existing and new tools based on the requirements provided by infrastructure and development teams.

• Mentor other developers in technology and processes, enabling their growth.

• Collaborate with Principal developers to come up with technical solutions that impact existing and new tools.

• Help enhance existing processes that will make the engineering team more efficient and productive.

• Work typically involves large or highly sophisticated software programs and systems

• Must be able to write readable, succinct, and bug-free code for highly scalable and highly available infrastructure management.

• Collaborate with other engineers on the team for regular code reviews

• Support systems and services during production incidents as part of the on-call rotation.

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 relevant industry experience, with 3+ years as a senior software engineer

• Strong communication skills, both oral and written

• Experience in Agile development methodologies

• Proficient in API fundamentals, best practices, and REST API architecture

• Database knowledge of MySQL, MongoDB or MSSQL

• Possess expertise in current programming languages (Python preferred) and technologies, with strong skills in writing code and programming tasks

• Strong problem-solving and organizational skill set

• Experience with virtual server technologies such as VMware, OVirt and others

• Lead and influence the direction and prioritization of the design and development of highly scalable software systems and applications

• Experience delivering applications using CI/CD tools following best practices

• Knowledge and experience with source control systems and CI/CD pipelines (Git, Gitlab, Jenkins, or similar tools)

• Enjoy working in a team setting with engineers of varying experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Has had a leading role in the design, implementation, and deployment of one or more high volume, cross-functional enterprise-level systems

• Experience writing unit tests / implementing test driven development processes

• Has worked on systems that automatically deploy bare metal systems at scale

• Experience developing rich, interactive and well-performing user interfaces using frameworks like React or Angular.

• Experience with observability tools (Datadog, Grafana, Splunk, New Relic or similar)

• Has deployed Windows Server OS images to virtual or physical infrastructure using an automated toolset

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in Seattle, WA and in New York City, NY is $159,500 to $213,900 per year; the hiring range for this position in Santa Monica/Burbank/Glendale/L.A., California and in Bristol, Connecticut is $152,200 to $204,100; and the hiring range for this position in North Carolina is $145,000 to $194,400 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.