Sr Product Software Engineer at The Walt Disney Company in Seattle, WA, USA

Job description

• On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we’re reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world’s most beloved stories while also transforming Disney’s media business for the future. Whether that’s evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world.
• A few reasons why we think you’d love working for Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology:
• Building the future of Disney’s media business: DE&E Technologists are designing and building the infrastructure that will power Disney’s media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.
• Reach & Scale: The products and platforms this group builds and operates delight millions of consumers every minute of every day – from Disney+ and Hulu, to ABC News and Entertainment, to ESPN and ESPN+, and much more.
• Innovation: We develop and execute groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news.
• The Event Platform team is the pillar of a data processing pipeline responsible for powering core features and analytics across all of Disney’s streaming services (including Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, and more).
• The team is responsible for transmitting billions of client-emitted signals throughout the Disney ecosystem. We build and manage platforms that process terabytes of data daily while performing real-time enrichment and aggregation for nearline and offline uses.
• As a software engineer at Disney, you will help to build the platform that powers these applications. You will help design and scale infrastructure to support massive scale at low latency while improving the software delivery process. You will help innovate how event pipelines at Disney function and build out the next generation of streaming platforms.
• We value creativity, curiosity, and inquisitiveness. If you believe in innovating and making an impact, join us and become a part of the team that creates magical Disney viewing experiences.

Responsibilities

• Technical Leadership: Lead the design and architecture of high-scale services and observability platforms, integrating them with existing telemetry infrastructure.
• Execution & Autonomy: Manage complex projects, taking high-level requirements and breaking them down into technical roadmaps with clear milestones.
• Operational Excellence: Own the full software development lifecycle, including deployment, monitoring, logging, and on-call.
• Mentorship: Actively mentor junior and mid-level engineers, focusing on their growth through constructive code reviews and technical guidance.
• Stakeholder Management: Collaborate cross-functionally with product, client, and data platform teams to negotiate architectural decisions and align technical plans with business goals.
• Innovation: Deliver working prototypes and proof-of-concepts (POCs) for complex technical proposals.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a related technical field.
• 5+ years of experience building and scaling production-grade software in Java.
• Strong expertise in developing and operating observability platforms, including metrics, logging, tracing, and alerting.
• Proven ability to take ownership and responsibility for the entire software development lifecycle, from conception to deployment and operations.
• Excellent technical leadership and mentorship skills, with a passion for building and growing engineering teams.
• Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to effectively collaborate with diverse stakeholders.
• Ability to leverage AI tools like Claude Code and Cursor effectively for increased productivity.
• Expertise in streaming data applications like Apache Flink, Apache Kafka, or similar technologies.
• Hands-on experience with AWS services (specifically, Kinesis, MSF, Dynamo, ElastiCache, Lambda, Cloudwatch, Datadog).
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform.
• Knowledge of data products and platforms, including Spark, Parquet, Athena, Databricks.
• Being an excellent teammate; actively helping the team and team members grow

Skills

Required

• Java
• Technical leadership
• Mentorship
• Communication
• Interpersonal skills
• AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor)

Preferred

• Apache Flink
• Apache Kafka
• Terraform
• Spark
• Parquet
• Athena
• Databricks

Benefits

• The hiring range for this position in Seattle, WA is $148,700 - $199,400 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.