Lead Software Engineer - AI Core Engineering

Lead Software Engineer - AI Core Engineering

Location:

Glendale, California, United States / San Francisco, California, United States
Business:
Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology
Date posted:
Dec. 15, 2025

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, working 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.

• 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:
  Disney’s technology and products serve as a signature doorway for fans’ connections with the company’s brands and stories.
• Innovation:
  We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and solve complex technical problems.

We’re hiring a Lead Software Engineer to drive the design, development, and scaling of AI Core Capabilities that accelerate AI adoption across Ad Technology. You will guide the creation of shared agents, registries, initializers, and web‑based solutions, ensuring that AI integration is consistent, safe, and efficient across the organization.

This role blends hands‑on engineering with technical leadership: you’ll set patterns, mentor senior engineers, and collaborate with infra, data, and product teams to ensure AI is delivered using shared AI capabilities, governance, observability, and enterprise‑grade quality.

• Define reference designs and best practices for reusable AI agents, services, and webapps.
• Provide technical guidance and code/design reviews for senior engineers.

• Lead the design and development of agents, SDKs, and accelerators that support multiple teams.
• Deliver APIs and frameworks that simplify integration with AI services and enterprise systems.
• Develop high‑quality APIs and SDKs that simplify adoption of AI capabilities by other engineering teams.

• Establish standards for guardrails, evaluation, and observability of AI‑driven workflows.
• Partner with security and governance teams to ensure compliance and safe adoption.

• Mentor engineers, share knowledge, and raise the overall technical bar.
• Work with product, infra, and security leaders to accelerate AI adoption across Disney Ad Tech.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field (Master’s preferred), or equivalent experience.
• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with 1+ years in technical leadership roles.
• Strong proficiency in Python and backend frameworks; experience building scalable APIs and SDKs.
• Hands‑on with LLM APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude) and orchestration frameworks (e.g., Lang Chain, Lang Graph).
• Experience integrating with enterprise AI services such as AWS Bedrock or Azure AI Foundry.
• Strong knowledge of AI safety, governance, and evaluation practices.
• Proven ability to mentor engineers and drive cross‑team adoption of shared solutions.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to explain complex technical concepts to both engineers and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Experience conducting code reviews and enforcing best practices for maintainability, security, and performance.
• Proven ability to mentor and coach engineers, providing feedback, guidance, and technical growth opportunities.
• Experience with system design and architecture discussions, including trade‑off…