Manager, Software Engineering - AI Core Engineering

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.

Ad Platforms is responsible for Disney’s industry-leading ad technology and products – driving advertising performance, innovation, and value in Disney’s sports, news, and entertainment content, across all media platforms.

We are hiring a Manager, AI Core Engineering to lead a growing team of engineers building the core AI capabilities, shared services, and developer‑facing web applications that accelerate AI adoption across Ad Technology. You will oversee a diverse team of backend and UI engineers at varying levels of seniority—ranging from those designing reusable agents, orchestration layers, and shared services, to those creating intuitive web interfaces for video analysis, enablement dashboards, and AI developer tooling.

As a people manager, you will coach engineers across disciplines, drive technical delivery, and partner with product, infrastructure, and governance teams to ensure solutions are safe, scalable, and aligned with enterprise standards. This role blends organizational leadership with technical depth as you will be accountable for outcomes, roadmaps, and enabling engineers to deliver their best work.

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of full stack engineers (backend-heavy) and UI-focused developers.
• Drive career development, performance management, and team culture.
• Foster an inclusive, high‑performing environment.

• Own execution of the AI Core roadmap, ensuring timely delivery of reusable agents, services, and developer‑facing web apps.
• Remove blockers, balance workloads, and track progress against objectives and key results (OKRs).
• Partner with product and TPM counterparts on planning and prioritization.

• Partner with infrastructure, data, product, and security teams to integrate AI core capabilities into enterprise and customer‑facing systems.
• Represent AI Core Engineering in leadership forums, sharing updates, risks, and adoption progress.

• Guide architecture and design, review team proposals, manage capacity, and mitigate risks and blockers to keep projects on track.
• Ensure best practices for guardrails, governance, observability, and developer enablement.
• Balance priorities across backend services, AI orchestration, and UI/web application delivery.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field (Master’s preferred), or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ years in a…