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Lead Software Engineer, Ad Platforms

Job ID 10105535 Location San Francisco, California, United States / Santa Monica, California, United States / Seattle, Washington, United States Business Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology Date posted Feb. 05, 2025
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Job Summary:

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we’re reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world’s most beloved stories while also transforming our 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 enhance 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 here: 

  • Building the future of Disney’s media: DE&E Technologists are designing and building the infrastructure that will power our 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 implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news. 
     

Ad Platforms organization within Disney Entertainment and ESPN Technology is fully responsible for building, enhancing and maintaining the high-performance, distributed, microservice-based Advertising Platform across all of Disney online properties, including Hulu and ESPN+. We build and maintain proprietary technology, ranging from ad serving and ad delivery, campaign management, reporting as well as all the integrations internal and external that come with evolving and maintaining a best-in-class video advertising business. 

The Forecasting team is under Ad Platforms, and its mission is to Support Ads Inventory Forecasting business requirements. The Inventory Forecasting Platform provides unified inventory forecasting modelling and result accessing. This is a strong cross-domain team to deliver E2E solutions covering tech areas ranging from machine learning, big data, microservices to data visualization.  

Our team is seeking a Lead Software Engineer. The right person for this role should have extensive experience on big data as well as solid expertise on backend services or full stack. If you are someone who is proactive, hardworking, and enthusiastic in these domains, this is a phenomenal role for you! 

 
WHAT YOU’LL DO 

  • Contribute to a team of big data and backend engineers to deliver high value projects 
  • Lead the development of large-scale data platform for batch and real-time processing, and own features of big data applications to fit evolving business needs 
  • Lead the design of our next-gen cloud based big data infrastructure for batch and streaming data applications, and continuously improve performance, scalability and availability 
  • Balance architectural and design considerations such as performance, scalability, reusability and flexibility issues 
  • Advocate the best engineering practices, including the use of design patterns, CI/CD, code review and automated test 
  • Collaborate with program managers, product managers, SDET, and researchers in an open and innovative environment 

Minimum Qualifications: 

  • Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Electronics Engineering, or related field
  • At least 7 years of professional programming and design experience in Scala, Java, Python etc. 
  • 3+ years of big data development experience with technical stacks like Spark, Hive, SingleStore, Airflow, Kafka, Flink and AWS 
  • Strong knowledge of system / application design and architecture 
  • Experience of building industry level high available and scalable service 
  • Experience with processing large amount of data at petabyte level 
  • Passionate about technologies, and openness to interdisciplinary work 

NICE-TO-HAVES 

  • Demonstrated ability with cloud infrastructure technologies, including Terraform, K8S, Spinnaker, IAM, ALB, etc. 
  • Experience with Grafana, Datadog. 
  • Experience in widely used Web framework (React.js, Vue.js, Angular, etc.) and good knowledge of Web stack HTML, CSS, Webpack 
  • Ads domain knowledge 


The hiring range for this position in Santa Monica/LA, CA is $152,200.00 to $204,100.00 per year, in San Francisco, CA is $166,800.00 to $223,600.00 per year, and in Seattle, WA is $159,500.00 to $213,900.00 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.

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About Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology:

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Technology (DE&E Technology) provides the technological backbone and product development for Disney’s two media business units, while helping to keep the company at the vanguard of innovation – enabling the Company to continuously leverage technology to enhance storytelling and creativity, while delivering scalability, flexibility, and efficiency for its businesses.

About The Walt Disney Company:

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise that includes three core business segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Experiences. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family. Disney’s stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.

This position is with Disney Streaming Technology LLC, which is part of a business we call Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology.

Disney Streaming Technology LLC is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, military or veteran status, medical condition, genetic information or disability, or any other basis prohibited by federal, state or local law. Disney champions a business environment where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best stories and be relevant in a constantly evolving world.

DISABILITY ACCOMMODATION FOR EMPLOYMENT APPLICATIONS

The Walt Disney Company and its Affiliated Companies are Equal Employment Opportunity employers and welcome all job seekers including individuals with disabilities and veterans with disabilities. If you have a disability and believe you need a reasonable accommodation in order to search for a job opening or apply for a position, visit the Disney candidate disability accommodations FAQs. We will only respond to those requests that are related to the accessibility of the online application system due to a disability.

Having technical issues? View the FAQs for help.

Hiring Process

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