Principal Software Engineer - Ad

Principal Software Engineer – Ad Experiences

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 across the Walt Disney Company’s media portfolio to advance the technological foundation and consumer media touchpoints serving millions of people worldwide.

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.

The Ad Experiences Fleet aims to unleash the magic of Disney by leveraging cutting‑edge creative tools and fostering creative innovation to craft captivating, interactive ad experiences that deeply resonate with consumers and deliver superior value for our advertisers while enhancing the viewer experience to maximize revenue.

As part of our team, you’ll develop and own systems that enable rapid prototyping, testing, and validation of interactive ad formats with real viewers and advertisers—fueling innovation and revenue growth across our CTV platforms. These experiences are then integrated into creative platforms owned by the Fleet, creating new ad experiences available to all ad‑tier users.

As our team's Principal Software Engineer, you will apply your battle‑tested experience, deep technical knowledge of software and systems, and leadership skills to help teams create scalable, performant, maintainable, and testable systems.

• A willingness and desire to effectively communicate and collaborate across teams and organizations.
• Demonstrated ownership and expertise in the projects delivered by our teams.
• Proficiency in designing and implementing robust, scalable, tolerant distributed systems, and advocating best practices to fellow engineers.
• A passion for mentoring, learning, and adapting to a very dynamic and fast‑paced environment.
• A proven ability to work with product teams to influence and translate requirements into well‑defined technical implementations, and to define technical and operational metrics to measure system health.
• Knowledge of relevant technologies and their potential applications within our systems, and the ability to articulate their pros and cons.
• A keen eye for potential optimizations and enhancements to our services using dedicated research time.
• Kindness and pragmatic optimism.
• Your unique view and experience.

• Writing and reviewing code and tests.
• Reviewing code and test implementations for best practices and algorithmic complexity.
• Available to support engineers on an On‑Call shift, when needed.
• Reading requirements documentation from Product, providing feasibility perspective and translating into implementation tasks, and partnering with team leads through execution as needed.
• Exploring, researching, implementing proofs‑of‑concept, and proposing solutions that improve Ad Serving systems (reduce cost and overhead, improve maintainability, minimize time to production, etc.).
• Defining, reviewing, and documenting software and system designs in a high‑throughput, low‑latency microservices environment.
• Enhancing system observability with proper metrics, monitors, and alerts.
• Fostering open communication during architectural discussions, confidently defending decisions while welcoming feedback.
• Bridging the gap between diverse team requirements and technical capabilities to deliver cohesive, scalable solutions.
• Mentoring and inspiring others in all aspects of professional software development.

• BS or MS in Computer Science/Engineering or relevant work experience.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• Advanced proficiency…