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

• 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.

Job Summary:

Describe what the person will do in the role - how he/she will impact the organization.

Our team is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to help us deliver excellent streaming experiences for Hulu and Disney+ as a developer of our client player. Our team is responsible for playback across several devices including gaming consoles and set top boxes. You will have the opportunity to lead in the design and implementation of our cross-platform C/C++ and Rust player that runs Disney+ and Hulu on these devices.

We’re looking for an experienced C/C++ or Rust engineer who has video player and cross platform development experience. You should have a passion for coding and debugging hard problems, and an eagerness to help us deliver seamless video to our subscribers.  As a lead engineer, you will get to own large features, lead the technical direction of our work, and mentor and provide technical expertise to other engineers. You will work closely with other technical teams in the application layer and backend video services to deliver features.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain our Rust and C/C++ player that drives our streaming experience

• Optimize our player to perform well for resource constrained platforms

• Create and review architecture and designs for our team’s projects

• Maintain a strong understanding of our code to identify, research and address issues, collaborate with application development teams, services engineering teams and product management to help understand and explain device limitations and requirements

• Lead in strategies to ensure the quality and stability of our deployments, including testing strategies and telemetry approaches

• Develop our project’s build system and continuous integration system as needed

• Provide technical expertise or mentoring to developers on our team, hold our team accountable to high development standards

Basic Qualifications

• Minimum of 7 years of related work experience

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field or equivalent experience

• Long record of full software development lifecycle experience

• Fluent in C and C++ or Rust

• Willing to learn Rust

• Experience developing and optimizing multi-threaded applications

• Experience using build runners / compilation tools for multi-platform projects

• Strong individual contributor with a drive to learn and patience to teach others

• Great communication and collaboration skills and a strong teamwork ethic

Preferred Qualifications

• Rust

• Experience in Streaming technologies, including:

  • HLS (preferred) or DASH

  • DRM technologies like Playready or Widevine

  • Adaptive Bitrate Streaming Algorithms

  • Caption and subtitle formats such as CEA-608 / 708

  • Codecs AVC, HEVC, AAC, EAC3

• Cross-Platform Development

• Embedded operating system experience

• Experience developing for gaming consoles (e.g. Playstation, Switch), Android devices (e.g.FireTV), or similar devices

• Familiarity with set-top box development and specialized SoCs from manufacturers like Broadcom, MediaTek, etc.

The hiring range for this position in Seattle, Washington and New York, NY is $145,500 to $195,000 per year. Santa Monica, CA is $138,900 to $186,200 per year, San Francisco, CA is $152,100 to $203,900 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.