Lead Software Engineer

Job ID 10117965 Location New York, New York, United States / Santa Monica, California, United States / San Francisco, California, United States / Seattle, Washington, United States Business Disney Entertainment Date posted Apr. 07, 2025

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Job Summary:

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology

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.

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology has been investing tremendously to modernize its platform by developing a platform layer that exposes the commerce system’s capabilities to our front end device clients (Web, Mobile, Living Room devices) and our service partners like the VX platform. The primary objective of the team is to abstract away the core commerce domains from client teams and centralize all of growth life platform capabilities into one shared layer. Another objective of the team is to decouple these core commerce systems to allow for faster feature delivery.

Responsibilities:

Work alongside Product and Business teams to understand the business implications and user flows for sign up and user account management.
Architect and develop a future proof API layer that exposes the commerce lifecycle platform capabilities to clients.
Craft and Develop robust API contracts and scalable microservices for internal clients.
As a lead engineer, you will define technical proposals and orchestrate the high-level design and system flow between clients and backend systems.
Mentor junior engineers on the team.
Be the go-to person for technical question
Understand key dependencies such as the core subscription, billing, and payment systems and how they will affect clients.
Be responsible for the end-to-end software development lifecycle for our systems: Conceptualize, design, build, code-review, test, load-test, launch, measure performance.
Collaborate with the Product team to translate requirements into well-defined technical implementation.
Define technical and operational critical metrics to measure system health.
Challenge our team and software to be even better.

Basic Qualifications:

BS or MS in Computer Science or equivalent work experience
7+ years of relevant software engineering experience
Strong code design and architectural skill
API design experience (authoring and providing feedback) with stakeholders
Strong programming (Java or other related programming languages) and scripting skills
Familiarity with SQL
Outstanding communication, collaboration skills, and a strong ethic of teamwork
Quality-first demeanor with a focus on test automation and CI/CD
The ability to jump into a project and contribute immediately to both architecture and implementation
Strong analytical skills

Preferred Qualifications:

Experience with Spinnaker and Kubernetes
Experience with Spring Webflux or Reactive programming in Java
Experience with GraphQL (implementation and integration)
Experience or familiarity with gRPC
Experience with AWS, Terraform

The hiring range for this position in Los Angelos, CA is $152,200 - $204,100, and for Seattle, WA is $159,500 - $213,900 and for New York City is $159,500 - $213,900, and for San Francisco, CA is $166,800 - $223,600. 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:

At Disney Corporate you can see how the businesses behind the Company’s powerful brands come together to create the most innovative, far-reaching and admired entertainment company in the world. As a member of a corporate team, you’ll work with world-class leaders driving the strategies that keep The Walt Disney Company at the leading edge of entertainment. See and be seen by other innovative thinkers as you enable the greatest storytellers in the world to create memories for millions of families around the globe.

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.

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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