Principal Software Engineer

Job ID 10137314 Location Glendale, California, United States / San Francisco, California, United States / New York, New York, United States / Seattle, Washington, United States Business Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology Date posted Dec. 08, 2025

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Job Summary:

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.

Job Summary

The Application Player Engineering team mission is to design video streaming playback solutions in collaboration with UI, 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 to create global feature rich standardized streaming media playback solutions on cross-functional devices including Apple, Android, Roku, and Web Technologies. Our intention is to design and develop a layered architecture for media playback which can span all the Disney direct-to-consumer brands like Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu. Your focus will be focused on creating solutions to scale for players, collaborating with media playback teams on other platforms to ensure a consistent software architecture which delivers a best-in-class streaming experience for your viewers while providing a foundation for media playback innovation at Disney.

This is a hands-on Engineering position for Application Player Engineering across a variety of Streaming Technologies. You will apply technical expertise to create solutions that scale, manage project priorities, deliverables and design and enhance software solutions surrounding media technology to scale. You will architect reusable solutions that will be shared across Disney experiences. You may lead others to solve complex problems and provide oversight and direction to other software engineers. 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.

Role Location: This is a Hybrid role requiring 4 days onsite (Monday-Thursday) in the following office locations:

Glendale, CA
New York, NY
Seattle, WA
San Francisco, CA

Responsibilities

Design and implement solutions for new features which integrate with various Disney media 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.
Ability to collaborate in productive development teams as well as the larger engineering organization.
Identify patterns that can help teams scale, create well-documented proposals, and drive adoption of those patterns.
Challenge current architectural choices while collaborating to solve problems in innovative ways.
Drive adoption of consistent technical frameworks across the organization.

Basic Qualifications

Minimum of 10 years of related work experience in Software Engineering crafting large-scale technologies. Strong programming skills in Java, C++, or other object-oriented language and a strong grasp of computer science fundamentals.
Bachelor’s or Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience
Broad experience and perspective on problem-solving.
Fluent in programming paradigms including Object Oriented and Reactive.
Champion cross-team projects.
Coach and mentor other team-mates to ensure that all software utilizes industry best practices.
Collaborate efficiently with Product Management, Technical Program Management, Operations, and other Engineering teams to capture requirements, drive implementation, and provide transparency to stakeholders.
Extensive experience working and implementing Design Patterns.
Expertise with unit test frameworks and continuous integration systems.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with streaming technology frameworks across multiple platforms.
Experience with streaming technologies including HLS, MPEG-DASH, Transport Stream, and CMAF
Experience directly managing or mentoring a team.

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in Glendale, CA is $188,400 to $252,600 per year, in New York, NY and Seattle, WA is $197,400 to $264,700 per year, and in San Francisco, CA is $206,400 to $276,700. 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 and ESPN Product & Technology:

At Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology, we’re blending imagination and innovation to reimagine the ways people experience and engage with the world’s most beloved stories and products. Our work is wide-ranging and deeply sophisticated. We create amazing experiences, transform the future of media, and build products and platforms that enable the connection between people everywhere and the stories and sports they love.

Disney’s ability to marry world-class technology with one-of-a-kind creativity makes us unique. It is at the heart of our past, present, and future. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers.

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 and ESPN Product & 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.

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