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:

Describe what the person will do in the role - how he/she will impact the organization.

The User Enablement team is responsible for building and operating large-scale, business-critical backend services that support core user-facing capabilities. The team works on high-throughput Java and Scala-based services, offline ETL pipelines that process massive data volumes, and the maintenance and deployment of machine learning models associated with critical services.

We are seeking a Senior Development Engineer with strong backend engineering experience, solid distributed systems knowledge, and a passion for building reliable, scalable platforms. If you enjoy solving complex technical problems, working with large-scale data systems, and improving user experiences through robust services, this is a great opportunity for you.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

Summarize job responsibilities, core deliverables and major duties. What is required for the position to exist?  

-Focus on major areas of work, typically 20% or more of role

% of Time

• Design, build, and maintain business-critical backend services using Java and Scala.
• Develop scalable and reliable systems that support User Enablement capabilities.
• Build, operate, and optimize offline ETL pipelines that process massive data volumes.
• Maintain and deploy machine learning models associated with critical backend services.
• Improve service performance, scalability, stability, and operational excellence.
• Diagnose, debug, and resolve production issues across distributed backend systems.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including product, data, platform, and infrastructure teams.
• Develop and maintain automation test frameworks, test tools, and software quality practices.
• Contribute to architecture discussions and help evolve services to support long-term business growth.

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Minimum and Preferred. Inclusive of Licenses/Certs (include functional experience as well as behavioral attributes and/or leadership capabilities)

Required Education  

• BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field

Basic Qualifications

• 5+ years of software development experience using Java, Scala, or similar backend languages.
• Strong experience building large-scale, production-level backend services.
• Solid understanding of distributed systems, data processing, service reliability, and performance optimization.
• Experience with offline ETL pipelines and large-scale data processing.
• Comfort maintaining and deploying machine learning models associated with critical services.
• Strong database design, query optimization, and data maintenance experience.
• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to work independently in complex technical areas.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Experience with automation testing, test frameworks, and software quality practices.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, dynamic engineering environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
• Experience with Spark, Flink, Kafka, Airflow, Hadoop, or similar large-scale data technologies.
• Experience operating high-availability backend services in cloud or containerized environments.
• Experience with observability tools, alerting, metrics, logging, and production monitoring.
• Experience with user lifecycle, entitlement, profile, notification, or enablement platforms.

The hiring range for this position in San Francisco, CA is $155,400.00-$208,400.00 per year based on a 40-hour work week. The amount of hours scheduled per week may vary based on business needs. 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.