Principal Software Engineer

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 touchpoints serving millions of people around the world.

You will conduct multidisciplinary research and development in video streaming for both live and on‑demand use cases, including participation in multimedia standardizations such as AOM, MPEG, IETF, and VQEG, and engagement with academic research groups and conferences.

Design media processing algorithms and software workflows to achieve velocity, scale, and efficiency, further optimizing our media platform.

Collaborate cross‑functionally with studios, streaming backend, streaming delivery, client, and product teams to investigate, develop, and adopt cutting‑edge technologies and specifications into production.

Lead a team conducting innovative research and advanced development involving advanced computer vision algorithms and applied ML/AI techniques to address media enhancement, understanding, analysis, compression, and storytelling through innovative media experiences.

As Principal Engineer, influence codebases, drive technical standards, contribute to organizational architectural best practices, and lead coordination for large projects, managing documentation, architecture, stakeholder engagement, and technical strategy.

The CMT team is global, with resources in Zurich, Bangalore, the US, and Beijing; coordination and collaboration across these locations are expected.

• Minimum of 10 years of related work experience
• Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field
• Deep expertise in video streaming technologies (e.g., codecs, streaming packagers, distribution, playback algorithms)
• Strong background in applying deep learning techniques to media processing tasks
• In‑depth understanding and experience with multimedia frameworks
• Proven track record of success and demonstrable experience in research and advanced development in video coding, media processing, or adjacent fields
• Proven track record of IP generation

• Expertise in video coding standards such as AV1, AV2, AVC, HEVC, VVC
• Knowledge and experience in C/C++
• Knowledge and experience with Python
• Applied knowledge of media metadata and processing
• gStreamer media framework
• Experience deploying and optimizing AI/ML models and frameworks
• Experience building web‑apps/dashboards for data visualization
• Experience working with Docker
• Web service development, REST APIs, XML/JSON
• Release management, continuous integration, Git/Git Hub
• High‑load, highly scalable, distributed applications

The hiring range for this position in California is $ to $ per year and in North Carolina is $ to $ per year. The base pay offered will be based on internal equity and may vary depending on geographic region, job‑related knowledge, skills, and experience. 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 other benefits, depending on the level and position offered.