Principal Software Engineer

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.

• 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.

Join us at Metadata Engineering, a driving force within the Media Engineering organization, where we fuel the magic of Disney Entertainment and ESPN Technology. Our team is dedicated to crafting, refining, and disseminating content metadata across our platforms with unparalleled precision. Imagine being part of a mission to ensure that every piece of content is not just showcased, but gloriously represented, enhancing the viewer experience across Disney Streaming platforms and beyond.

We're not just revolutionizing streaming video; we're reshaping it entirely. We're on the lookout for an exceptional Principal Software Engineer to elevate our team to new heights. As a key player, you'll spearhead the technical architecture, implementation, and enhancement of services vital to managing rights and availabilities across our extensive catalog, including Disney+, Hulu, and more.

• Define technical direction, strategy, and technology adoption for the Content Metadata domain across Disney+, Hulu, and more.
• Lead architectural reviews and oversee Descriptive, Rights, and Availabilities of the Content Catalog.
• Design well‑architected solutions, and iterate development following agile best practices.
• Develop data‑driven software systems aligned with business needs.
• Drive performance and cost optimization through metrics analysis.
• Advocate for best engineering practices, ensuring code quality and robust testing.
• Collaborate on novel solutions and innovate by challenging existing architectural choices.
• Ensure quality delivery by monitoring progress and directing when necessary.
• Expertise in technologies such as Springboot/Java, Django/Python, AWS services (Kinesis, Dynamo
  
  DB, S3, SNS, SQS), MySQL, Postgres, and Kafka.

• Minimum of 10 years related work experience.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent field, with 10 years of progressive software development experience.
• Proficiency in Java, Python, or similar languages.
• Demonstrated ability to implement improvement changes on production systems while concurrently adding new features to meet team initiatives.
• 6 years of expertise in core Computer Science principles, including Object‑Oriented programming, data structures, and algorithms (hashing, trees, graphs, search, etc.).
• 6 years of experience with both relational (SQL‑based) and non‑relational databases (Dynamo
  
  DB, Elasticache), as well as messaging technologies (Kinesis, Kafka, SQS, SNS).
• Proven track record in data modeling and streamlining data from multiple sources into a normalized format to enhance user experiences.
• Experience with high‑performance service or stream computing at large scale.

• Knowledge of media rights & window rules.
• Experience with metadata enrichment techniques leveraging ML/AI models (such as extraction of media embeddings, for example).

Department‑Specific Boiler Plates: Product Engineering is a unified team responsible for the engineering of Disney Entertainment & ESPN digital and streaming products and platforms. This includes…