Lead Software Engineer - Media Engineering

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.
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.
Media Engineering is an innovative organization that is focused on providing the best possible video playback experience, art, and metadata to customers around the world, powered by exceptional technology. This strategic work requires streamlining and repurposing technology across different business and distribution channels – including streaming, linear, and theatrical – so that technology can ebb and flow across the needs of the business.
Disney Entertainment and ESPN Technology is looking for a Lead Software Engineer to join the Targeting Innovation team within the Media Engineering organization. The Targeting Innovation team’s mission is to build highly available, high throughput services that are critical to delivering high quality content to our subscribers. The team is responsible for facilitating the last mile delivery of Disney media to our customers. This involves systems engaged in advanced decisioning around traffic shaping and routing to optimize for both cost as well as the user’s experience. If you enjoy streaming media, are interested in live sports and entertainment, or just want to join a fast-growing team that plays a critical role in the core functionality of our streaming products, then our team is for you.
Responsibilities
• Work with a team of engineers building software in a collaborative development process
• Work cross-team to build consensus on approach for delivering projects
• Interface with business stakeholders to understand and refine requirements
• Eliminate ambiguity in projects and communicate direction to engineers to help team members work in parallel
• Build high-performance, stable, scalable systems to be deployed in an enterprise setting
• Lead high-level architecture discussions and planning sessions
• Participate in the code review process by providing feedback on pull requests
• Participate in the on-call rotation, supporting systems and services during production incidents
• Author and provide feedback on technical proposals and root cause analyses
• Provide mentoring and advice for other engineers
• Establish engineering best practices and standards within the team to drive quality and excellence
• Contribute to the DEE&T technical community through presentations, tech talks, and other knowledge-sharing efforts
Basic Qualifications
• Minimum of 7+ years related experience designing backend architectures and delivering backend applications in a production environment
• Knowledge of AGILE/Scrum practices.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.
• Self-learner, independent, excellent problem-solving skills
• Expertise in functional programming to include Scala
• Experience building RESTful services (Scala APIs)
• 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
• Understanding of async programming models (events, callbacks, promises, async/await) and threading/concurrency
• Understanding of source control concepts and exposure to Git
• Experience with build and deployment technologies such as Jenkins and Docker
• Knowledge of caching technologies
• Strong grasp of computer science fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, databases, etc)
• Strong understanding of design patterns and principles
• Knowledge of source control systems and CI/CD pipelines
• Demonstrated knowledge of crafting and operating large-scale high-availability backend services and JVM services
• Experience with messaging technologies (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, SQS, etc.)
• Experience with functional programming patterns
• Experience operating within a Public Cloud Provider (e.g., AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud)
• Experience with observability tools for metrics, logging, and monitoring (e.g., Datadog, Splunk, Grafana)
The hiring range for this position in San Francisco is $166,800.00 to $223,600.00 per year, in Seattle or New York is $159,500.00, to $213,900.00 per year and in Santa Monica is $152,200.00 to $204,100.00 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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