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.

The Product & Data Engineering team is responsible for end-to-end development for Disney’s world-class consumer-facing products, including streaming platforms Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, and digital products & experiences across ESPN, Marvel, Disney Studios, NatGeo, and ABC News. The team drives innovation at scale for millions of consumers around the world across Apple, Android, Smart TVs, game consoles, and the web, with our platforms powering core experiences like personalization, search, messaging and data.

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.

As a Senior Software Engineer on the User Services squad, you will design, develop and test extremely high throughput and low latency platforms to serve both push and pull access patterns. These systems are used to drive highly personalized and rewarding user experiences across a broad spectrum of Disney products including Disney+, ESPN, Hulu, Marvel, ABC News and National Geographic.

The ideal candidate excels as a leader in a highly collaborative environment and has deep skills in server-side technology (High throughput web services, databases, event streams), cloud services (AWS, GCP, Azure), monitoring (Splunk, Grafana), and exposure to front end client development (Web, mobile, OTT devices).

What You Will Do:

• Collaborate with other teams to develop estimates, roadmaps, and workflow processes to achieve strategic company objectives

• Own the concept, design, implementation, and maintenance of complex technical projects that anticipate the needs of the business for years to come

• Build consensus and influence decisions through well-reasoned research and explanations

• Solve unique and complex problems that have a broad impact on the business

• Write efficient, reliable, and testable code 

• Review, analyze, and optimize code for readability, reliability, and performance

• Design and implement automated code and system tests

• Instrument, monitor, and support live operations of systems your team owns

• Troubleshoot and resolve issues, problems, and errors encountered across company platforms

• Manage multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced, deadline-oriented environment

• Work autonomously with minimal technical supervision

• Be a subject matter expert for your team

What You Will Bring:

Basic Qualifications

• Minimum of 5+ years of related work experience

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

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with both technical and non-technical audiences

• Expert understanding of Java programming language, Spring framework, and Maven dependency management

• Expert understanding of API design and distributed web service architecture

• Experience designing and implementing SQL and NoSQL databases

• Experience designing and implementing event streaming services

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s Degree in Computer Science or similar relevant field

• Motivated self-starter with the desire to learn and adapt to new technologies

• Experience designing and implementing custom application metrics and monitoring dashboards

• Experience with containerized cloud hosting

• Experience leveraging cloud platform services

• Deep experience with many of the following:

• Amazon Web Services ecosystem

• Optimized Cassandra database implementations

• Optimized Kafka implementations

• Unit, integration, and load test frameworks

• Analysis of application performance inside a JVM

• Experience with React UI framework

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in Glendale, California is $138,900 - $186,200 per year and in Seattle, Washington is $145,400 - $195,000 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.