Lead Software Engineer

Lead 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 touch points serving millions of people around the world.

We are looking for a Technical Lead Software Engineer to join the Playback Services team within the Media Engineering organization. The Playback Services team’s mission is to build highly available, high throughput services that are essential to delivering high quality content to our subscribers. The team is responsible for the backend of media playback, facilitating media selection, device customization, and anti‑piracy technologies.

If you enjoy streaming media, are interested in live sports and entertainment, or just want to join a fast‑growing team that plays a meaningful role in the core functionality of our streaming products, then the team is for you.

• Work with a team of engineers building software in a collaborative development process
• Build high‑performance, stable, scalable systems to be deployed in an enterprise setting
• Lead high‑level architecture discussions and planning sessions
• Participate in the code review process by providing feedback on pull requests
• Participate in the on‑call rotation, supporting systems and services during production incidents
• Author and provide feedback on technical proposals and root‑cause analyses
• Provide mentoring and advice for other engineers
• Establish engineering best practices and standards within the team to drive quality and excellence
• Contribute to the DSS technical community through presentations, tech talks, and other knowledge‑sharing efforts

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience
• 7+ years related experience designing backend architectures and delivering backend applications in a production environment
• Experience building RESTful Services in Scala or Java
• Understanding of async programming models (events, callbacks, async/await) and thread + concurrency
• Understanding of source control concepts and exposure to Git
• Experience with build and deployment technologies such as Jenkins, Spinnaker, and Docker
• Strong grasp of data structures, algorithms, and common design patterns
• Demonstrated knowledge in building and operating large‑scale high‑availability backend services
• Knowledge of caching technologies
• Proficiency in Cloud Platforms and Dev Ops Practices
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Self‑learner, independent, excellent problem‑solving skills

• Demonstrated knowledge in building and operating large‑scale high‑availability backend services in a JVM language
• Functional Programming in Scala
• Experience building RESTful Services in Scala
• Expertise in Performance Optimization and Scalability
• Demonstrated ability to analyze complex technical challenges, propose well‑reasoned solutions, and articulate design choices clearly
• Experience with AWS (EKS, S3, Elasti Cache, Kinesis, Open Search), Scala, Java, Python, Terraform
• Experience with observability tooling (e.g., Data Dog)

Hiring range for this position in New York, NY is $–$ 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.

Benefits include medical, financial, and other benefits, dependent on level and position offered. A bonus and/or long‑term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package.

Location:

New York, NY, USA.