Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

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 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.

• 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.

Media Engineering builds the software and systems which prepare, deliver, and play streaming media content across the Disney media brands including Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, and ABC. Our objective is to provide the best playback experience in the industry to our viewers.
 

Media Engineering handles video, audio, and metadata for normalization, processing, and packaging - supporting operator tools and automation for a scalable workflow. We build logic across both players and back-end services to measure, control, and optimize playback across our stack. We embrace unconventional thinking and are passionate about contributing to the Walt Disney Company’s direct-to-consumer experience.
 

The Advertising, Media Player Engineering team is looking for hardworking team players to join us in Media Engineering, who will thrive upon the legacy of the Disney media brands and are passionate about contributing to the experiences we deliver through ESPN, ABC News, Lucas Films, Marvel, National Geographic, Pixar, and the Disney animation and film studios.
 

Job Summary

The Media Player Engineering team mission is to design video streaming playback solutions in collaboration with encoding, packaging, and delivery teams to optimize the Disney streaming technology stack for the best streaming experience possible on all platforms.

Our team is seeking someone who can fill the role of Principal Software Engineer who can architect and build next generation media ad experiences. Your focus will be on collaborating with media playback, advertising and other platforms teams to ensure a consistent software architecture which delivers a best in class streaming and ad experience for your viewers while providing a foundation for enhanced ad innovation at Disney.

You are a person who enjoys working with other teams and technologies to understand their constraints. You enjoy the challenges presented by difficult problems and take pride in finding solutions which successfully thread the needle between design constraints, technical constraints, and the end experience of your users. You foster trust, approach problems with empathy and respect, and embrace creativity.
 

Responsibilities 

• Design and implement solutions for new features which integrate with various Disney services and back-ends.
• Collaborative API design with peer teams on the back-end as well as front-end teams which depend on our libraries.
• Research and development for media playback experiences, integration, and testing.
• Project planning and team management.
• Track dependencies as related to current projects, raise concerns when dependencies are not in an expected state.
• Participate in project estimation and resource planning.
   

Basic Qualifications

• 10+ years experience in software engineering
• 5+ years of experience working on interactive advertisement
• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science or equivalent experience
• Able to demonstrate experience in the full lifecycle of software development. Early stage, maintenance, and end of life..
• Familiar with advertising standards and industry initiatives
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
   

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with video streaming technologies
• Experience running interactive ad experience on resource constrained devices
• End-to-end architecture advertising experience
   

The hiring range for this position in New York, NY and Seattle, WA is $193,100.00 to $258,900.00 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.