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.

Job Summary:

The News & Entertainment Platform Engineering organization is looking for a Product Software Engineer who is passionate about developing high-performance platforms and growing their technical expertise.

Someone who can own small to medium sized software solutions and system goals within the team and organization, this role contributes in key areas with straightforward solutions. You will leverage knowledge and experience in your specialty while acquiring higher-level knowledge and skills, solving complex problems and taking on new perspectives across existing solutions.

As a member of our team, you will apply your knowledge and skills to help us deliver scalable, performant, maintainable, and testable software.

On a daily basis you should bring:

• A willingness and desire to effectively communicate and collaborate across teams and systems.

• A sense of ownership of the projects delivered by your team and department

• A passion for learning, and adapting to a very dynamic and fast paced environment

• Problem-solving skills with a focus on medium-complexity challenges

• Kindness and pragmatic optimism

• Your unique view and experience

Responsibilities of the Role:

• Develop, test, and maintain features within existing systems, contributing to architectural direction. Break down features into tasks and participate in code reviews and planning.

• Develop, document, and implement software solutions that meet specifications and influence future projects. Review and write code, execute testing and debugging of small to medium-sized software development projects.

• Serve as an escalation point for technical problems and maintenance. Present technical issues, solutions, and project status to senior team members.

• Collaborate with cross-functional technical teams to ensure proper alignment on projects and software feature deliverables. Actively contribute to architectural discussions, code reviews, design documents, and planning for assigned work.

Additional Expectations

• Promote and support Agile methodologies such as Scrum by actively participating in regular ceremonies such as stand-up, retrospectives, and sprint planning

• Help onboard new team members in a helpful, friendly, empathic manner

• Break work into prioritized features and help translate requirements into technical tasks

• Share information and communicate blockers more effectively within the team

• Participate in team discussions and deliver feedback to peers

Basic Qualifications:

• Minimum of 3 years of professional software engineering experience.

• Proficiency in at least one programming language, including Java, Python, or JavaScript.

• Working knowledge of the technologies, platforms, and technical components utilized by the organization.

• Familiarity with the team's coding standards, key performance indicators (KPIs), monitoring and measurement practices, and core tools and technologies.

• Understanding of message-based distributed systems and the principles of building scalable, resilient applications.

• Proven ability to thrive in a start-up, high-growth, or rapidly changing environment.

• Experience collaborating effectively with diverse and inclusive teams.

• Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to identify root causes, troubleshoot issues, and implement effective solutions.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

• Adaptable and flexible, with the ability to manage changing priorities and business needs.

• Experience translating business and technical requirements into software designs, technical documentation, and high-quality software solutions.

Preferred Qualifications

• SpringBoot and related Spring projects

• Relational database design/testing/troubleshooting

• Non-relational database technologies such as DynamoDB and OpenSearch

• SQS, SNS, and event-driven messaging architectures

• Terraform and infrastructure as code (IaC) practices

• Expert with at least one of: AWS, Azure, GCP (AWS strongly preferred)

• Experience building and testing distributed systems

Experience With

• Familiarity with Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) and Functional Programming (FP) principles and best practices.

• Exposure to or experience with Java and the Spring Framework.

• Familiarity with ElastiCache Redis, including caching, publish/subscribe (pub/sub) patterns, and distributed locking.

• Working knowledge of Elasticsearch for content indexing, search, and retrieval.

• Familiarity with AWS ECS Fargate for container orchestration and deployment.

• Exposure to Amazon SQS (FIFO and Standard queues) and Amazon SNS for messaging and event-driven architectures.

• Familiarity with GitLab CI/CD (Conveyor) pipelines and automated deployment practices.

• Working knowledge of Datadog APM, logging, monitoring, and dashboard creation.

• Experience using Amazon S3 for configuration management, artifact storage, and content publishing.

• Familiarity with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Terraform, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) concepts and practices.

Required Education 

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience.

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in Glendale, CA is $117,500 to $157,500 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.