Principal Software Engineer

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology (DEET), we’re reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world’s most beloved stories while also transforming Disney’s media business for the future. Whether that’s evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

 

A few reasons why we think you’d love working for Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

●   Building the future of Disney’s media business: DE&E Technologists are designing and building the infrastructure that will power Disney’s media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.

●   Reach & Scale: The products and platforms this group builds and operates delight millions of consumers every minute of every day – from Disney+ and Hulu, to ABC News and Entertainment, to ESPN and ESPN+, and much more.

●   Innovation: We develop and execute groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news.

The Search, Experience Management, & Images (SEMI) org within DEET collectively serves as the source of truth for experience curation, image delivery, in-app search, content enhancement, and localization. We have a collaborative culture that encourages technical ownership, knowledge sharing, and professional development. We build innovative and cutting-edge capabilities that drive subscriber engagement and monetization across Disney's streaming and digital products.

Job Summary:

The Experience Management sub-org within SEMI is hiring a Principal Software Engineer to enhance and support the Experience Platform for Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, and the other streaming services we support. We are looking for a Principal Engineer to lead high level architecture, coding best practices, systems integrations discussions across other engineering teams, and drive engineering initiatives that support Disney’s enhanced experience curation, and localization. You will be a key member of the engineering leadership team and work directly with the Sr. Engineering Manager and Engineering Managers across multiple teams in SEMI. Our organization is responsible for building tools & services that drive dynamic configuration, localization and curation of content across Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN. The work you do directly affects our business’ programming, engagement, and monetization goals.

The ideal candidate is looking to multiply the efficiency, architecture and culture of our organization by aspiring to leave things better than they find them. They excel in communication, multi-tasking and context-switching across several crucial engineering domains. They have a strong background in operational excellence and building observable platforms. There are three primary engineering domains teams this role will lead technically.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Drive operational excellence in the organization’s engineering services

• Work with engineering leadership, product, engineering and technical program management across the lifecycle of an initiative

• Contribute code to our repositories in support of product and technical initiatives

• Promote clean coding standards and introduce new technology where it could benefit our systems and utilities 

• Drive a metrics and test-oriented mindset for our software

• End-to-end ownership of systems: Ideate, review design, mentor during build, code-review, test, load-test, launch and monitor performance in production

• Mentor engineers across the organization’s domains and introduce proven best practices in a consistent manner across teams

• Lead architectural and design discussions to help the teams build robust and scalable services in a microservices architecture

• Provide transparent communication to engineering leadership and stakeholders

Basic Qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on building well-designed architecture, shipping robust code, and contributing to a positive team environment

• Demonstrated success working as a full-stack staff or principal engineer of meaningful & sophisticated internal tools and API services for 3+ years

• Demonstrated success in being part of a team problem-solving, designing and implementing software at scale

• Mentorship experience & a desire to help your fellow engineers get better at what they do

• Experience leading meaningful changes to align teams with industry best practices

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with experience presenting and explaining complex technical ideas to peers and leadership

• Ability to handle context-switching and supporting multiple priorities in parallel

• Experience with: Java, Kubernetes, AWS, Web Applications

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

Preferred Qualifications:

• Hands-on experience with any of: Java, TypeScript, NodeJS, Docker

• Experience with Machine Translation (MT), AI, ML, LLMs

• Experience presenting at internal/external conferences

• Proficiency with AWS or other cloud services provider

The hiring range for this position in Santa Monica, CA is $184,300 - $247,100, for New York, NY is $193,100 - $258,900. 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.