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. 

How will you contribute to our magical experience? 

This team is responsible for the combined status aggregation across the supply chain ecosystem, combining data from the media and metadata processing pipelines. This team is also responsible for QC state tracking and auditing as well as the search platform for the content supply chain.   

The Lead Software Engineer will be responsible for:  

• Lead a team of engineers responsible for performing analysis and building applications ensuring a successful operator experience for delivering content to end users.   

• Design and build robust software applications, utilizing software engineering and machine learning expertise to deliver high performance solutions.  

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including product and engineering, to identify opportunities, business impact and technical requirements.  

• Act in people supervisory capacity and serve as a technical leader, setting best practices and leading architectural discussions within the team.  

• Mentor, empower, and provide career growth opportunities for team members.  

• Prioritize tasks within a project to deliver high value initiatives, while anticipating and mitigating potential risk wherever possible.  

• Create and manage key engineering health KPIs through regular monitoring in a scalable way as systems and products expand.  

• Provide on-call rotational support as needed  

 What we need from you to be part of this story: 

• 5+ years of software engineering experience 

• Proficiency in backend development using one or more general-purpose programming languages (e.g., Python, Java, JavaScript) 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent work experience 

• Understanding of Agile methodologies and experience with Git source control 

• Strong problem-solving skills and ability to identify root causes 

• Solid communication skills, both written and verbal 

• Advanced level of English. 

• Comfortable working in fast-paced, high-growth, or startup environments 

• Experience with Scala or functional programming, AWS/cloud infrastructure, media player integration, and messaging systems like Kafka or SQS (Preferred) 

• Familiarity with web accessibility, modern web standards, asynchronous programming (e.g., promises, async/await), and CI/CD tools such as Git, Jenkins, and Docker (Preferred) 

Additional Information 

At Disney, we believe it takes great people to create the memorable experiences, products and services our consumers know and love. We are a team of storytellers and hire under equal opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, disability and gender identity. We foster a corporate culture of belonging and inclusiveness, which empowers our staff and company to thrive. At Disney, everyone has the opportunity to speak up and participate, grow and share ideas. 

“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” — Walt Disney