Job Requirements

About the Role & Team:

The Walt Disney Company is a global leader in entertainment and technology. Walt's passion was continuously envisioning new ways to move audiences around the world. A passion that remains our touchstone in an enterprise that spans animation, theme parks, resorts, and a cruise line, as well as sports, news, movies, and a variety of other businesses. Uniting each endeavor is a commitment to creating and delivering unforgettable experiences, and we continually seek new ways to enhance these exciting experiences.

The Disney Kids & Family (DKF) group oversees the creation, development, and production of live-action and animated television content for children, teenagers, and families under the Disney brand through the Disney Television Animation studio. This content is aired on the group's various cable channels, such as Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, and the Disney+ streaming platform.

DKF develops original series, movies, and other content that align with Disney's family-friendly brand image and appeal to its target audience. These television properties could include distribution deals, marketing strategies, and brand management. DKF has a strong use of commercial and custom software technologies to create its products. The use of technology, engineering, development techniques, and software is essential to its production operations and workflows.

Real-time technologies are transforming how DKAF creates content, and a robust production pipeline is essential to that transformation. We're looking for a technically excellent, collaborative Senior Unreal Pipeline Engineer to join the Disney Kids and Family Technology team. In this role, you will develop, integrate, and support the end-to-end toolchain spanning real-time content creation, asset management, workflow automation, and data flow, working at the intersection of engineering and creative production. You will build the systems that let artists and production teams move content reliably from digital content creation tools into Unreal Engine and back out to delivery.

What You Will Do:

The Senior Unreal Pipeline Engineer is a senior individual contributor and technical resource who drives quality, innovation, and collaboration across projects and teams. This includes the following:

• Design, implement, and optimize high-performance, stable, and scalable pipeline systems and real-time tooling for enterprise deployment.
• Lead architecture discussions and planning sessions across the Unreal Engine and content-creation tool chain, contributing innovative solutions and technical improvements.
• Ramp up quickly on existing pipeline software and Unreal projects to deliver integrated solutions, mentoring others in engineering best practices.
• Analyze production pipeline procedures and problems, recommending and implementing improvements to real-time content creation, asset management, workflow automation, and data flow.
• Take ownership of developing new features, tools, and systems across the end-to-end tool chain, ensuring technical quality and alignment with production needs.
• Support systems and services during production incidents, collaborating with creative and technical teams to resolve issues and maintain stability during high-demand production cycles.
• Mentor and support engineers and technical artists, sharing expertise and fostering technical growth.
• Facilitate code review processes, setting standards and building consensus on quality and design, including governance of AI-assisted code generation.
• Represent the team in technical presentations and knowledge-sharing efforts.
• Influence technical direction and design decisions across the pipeline, real-time content creation, and integration layers.
• Collaborate with business and production partners to refine requirements and ensure solutions meet organizational objectives.
• Author technical proposals and root cause analyses, shaping project and system outcomes.
• Optimize and improve team workflows, advocate for best practices and continuous improvement.
• Evaluate and implement process changes to enhance productivity, quality, and innovation across the pipeline.
• Establish and uphold engineering practices and standards within the team.
• Partner with Production Technology, Pipeline/Web Engineering, and Studio Operations teams to ensure real-time and pipeline tooling integrate seamlessly with production workflows and tooling ecosystems.
• Communicate technical information effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders, translating production needs into engineering solutions.

Required Qualifications & Skills:

• Minimum 7 years of professional software engineering experience, with significant time building production tools or pipelines.
• Hands-on experience with Unreal Engine, including editor tooling, plugins, or runtime systems.
• Strong programming skills in C++ and Python for pipeline automation and tool development.
• Experience integrating and automating digital content creation (DCC) tools and asset pipelines (e.g., Maya/MEL, Qt, image/video processing).
• Experience designing and maintaining asset management, workflow automation, and data-flow systems across a production pipeline.
• Experience with APIs and service integrations (RESTful, GraphQL) to connect toolchain components and data sources.
• Experience with Git-based development workflows and familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and automated deployment practices.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted coding tool best practices, including effective use, code-review standards for AI-generated code, and security considerations.
• Strong understanding of software design patterns and enterprise application architecture.
• Demonstrated ability to architect major systems and integrations.
• Excellent time management and organizational skills, and strong written documentation skills.
• Ability to work well individually and collaboratively in a fast-paced, production-critical environment.
• Experience with virtual production, real-time rendering, or in-camera VFX (ICVFX) workflows.
• Experience with Perforce (Helix Core) and/or production tracking systems such as ShotGrid/Flow Production Tracking.
• Experience with observability tooling, distributed tracing, or advanced monitoring platforms for pipeline services.
• Experience with platform engineering concepts or internal developer experience (DevEx) tooling.
• Experience integrating analytics, telemetry, or data pipelines into production tools.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Creativity in developing intuitive tools and efficient solutions that serve creative and production teams.

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical discipline or equivalent work experience required.

About The Walt Disney Company:

The Walt Disney Company, with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise with the following business segments: media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment, consumer products and interactive media. 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.

The Walt Disney Company is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or protected veteran status.

PAY TRANSPARENCY

This position is based in Glendale, CA. The hiring range/pay rate for the Senior Unreal Pipeline Engineer is $144.100 - 193,200 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.

This position is with Walt Disney Pictures, which is part of a business we call Disney Television Animation.

To learn more about Disney's guidelines on the use of AI for candidates, click here.

Walt Disney Pictures is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. 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.

DISABILITY ACCOMMODATION FOR EMPLOYMENT APPLICATIONS

The Walt Disney Company and its Affiliated Companies are Equal Employment Opportunity employers and welcome all job seekers including individuals with disabilities and veterans with disabilities. If you have a disability and believe you need a reasonable accommodation in order to search for a job opening or apply for a position, visit the Disney candidate disability accommodations FAQs. We will only respond to those requests that are related to the accessibility of the online application system due to a disability.

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