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:

1.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.

2.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. 

3.Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms, and solve complex and distinctive technical problems.

The Product Engineering organization 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.

Join the Live Pipeline team within the Product Engineering Organization and contribute to building the critical systems that power viewer playback across Disney Streaming services, including Hulu, Disney+, Star+, and ESPN+. Our team is responsible for implementing reliable, high-throughput services that handle media metadata and generate the manifest/playlist delivered to our web, mobile, and living room devices. We are seeking a motivated software engineer to help build and operate these essential services that support all Disney Streaming users. We're a fast-paced, dynamic, collaborative and fun team, and looking forward to finding out more about you!

You'll be part of a hardworking group of engineers who build and manage systems that power live playback for Disney Streaming clients running on smart TVs, smartphones, gaming consoles, FireTV, Apple TV, Roku, and others.

• We're passionate about streaming - just like you! You'll apply your experience with backend development to build large-scale, distributed services. 

• Collaborate with other software engineers and cross-functional teams.

• Maintain a deep understanding of our core systems and how they interact with upstream and downstream dependencies.

• Contribute and review code, set standards, and work with engineers to ensure product and design specifications are met.

• Responsible for fundamental platform performance, scalability and resiliency.

• Contribute to cross-functional troubleshooting of complex issues as needed.  

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

• 3+ years of hands-on, professional software engineering experience in backend development.

• Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent industry experience.

• Strong programming skills in Go / C++ and other object-oriented languages, and a strong grasp of computer science fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, databases, etc.)

• Experience using source control systems and CI/CD pipelines.

• Experience performing load testing and building creative solutions to optimize performance, latency, and cost.

• An ability to work both independently and collaboratively.

• A broad perspective on problem-solving.

• Experience deploying and scaling within a cloud/on-prem infrastructure.

• Expert in AWS

• Strong communication skills and a desire to share your knowledge with team members and others at Disney Streaming.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Familiarity with streaming video technology (i.e. DASH, HLS, CMAF, etc).

• Demonstrates a proactive problem-solving mindset, actively seeking to resolve issues, taking the initiative to identify and correct defects, and collaborating with colleagues to continuously analyze and optimize performance.

• Proven capability to excel in a small, fast-paced development team environment, coupled with the ability to independently manage tasks, diagnose and resolve issues, and effectively balance multiple competing priorities under stringent deadlines.

The hiring range for this position in California is $117,500.00 to $157,500.00 per year and in New York is $120,300.00 to $161,300.00 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.