Forward Deployed Engineer

The Enterprise Technology mission is to deliver technology solutions that align to business strategies while enabling enterprise efficiency and promoting cross-company collaborative innovation. Our group drives competitive advantage by enhancing our consumer experiences, enabling business growth, and advancing operational excellence. 

You should have a strong software engineering foundation and hands-on experience building AI-powered applications from the ground up. You will work across the application stack, including APIs, data pipelines, retrieval, model integration, agent orchestration, evaluation, and production deployment. AI coding tools such as Cursor and Claude Code can accelerate how you work, but they are not a substitute for understanding the systems you are building.

This role is a strong fit for software engineers, AI engineers, full-stack engineers, forward-deployed engineers, technical founders, and other deeply technical builders who have shipped AI-powered software into production.

We'd love to see something you've built! Please include a portfolio link

This team works in office Monday to Thursday.

Responsibilities:

• Design, build, test, deploy, and operate production AI applications end-to-end, including backend services, APIs, data integrations, retrieval systems, model interactions, agent workflows, and user-facing experiences.
• Work directly with stakeholders to translate ambiguous business problems into technical solutions and rapidly test prototypes with real users. 
• Own the user experience, including workflows, interfaces, automation, and human-in-the-loop decisions.
• Use tools such as LLM APIs, prompt design, RAG, agents, and evaluation methods to solve problems effectively.
• Build within Disney’s enterprise systems with appropriate security, monitoring, and operational practices.
• Test changes before launch using regression checks, golden sets, and other evaluation methods.
• Write clean, maintainable, production-quality code and participate actively in architecture discussions, code reviews, testing, debugging, and technical design.
• Partner with teammates through code reviews, debugging, and shared problem solving.
• Explain technical decisions and tradeoffs clearly to business stakeholders.

Required Qualifications:

• Minimum 3 years of experience designing, building, and shipping software applications for production users, including hands-on experience building AI/LLM-powered applications. 
• Strong software engineering foundation with demonstrated ability to independently write, test, debug, and maintain production-quality code.
• Experience with modern AI development tools and methods, such as prompt design, agents, RAG, LLM APIs, and evals.
• Daily or frequent use of AI coding tools such as Cursor, Claude Code, or similar tools.
• Strong product and business judgment, with experience connecting features to user needs and business outcomes.
• Strong learning agility and comfort working with new tools and changing technology.
• Ability to communicate clearly with senior stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience as a product manager, designer, operator, engineer, founder, or builder who has used AI tools to create working products.
• Experience building AI products without a dedicated engineering team.
• Forward-deployed engineering or similar experience.
• Strong design-engineering instincts and ability to ship polished user experiences.
• Experience working across multiple business areas such as media, parks, retail, operations, HR, or finance.
• Experience with evaluation methods such as golden sets, trace analysis, LLM-as-judge, or production eval pipelines.
• Strong writing skills for documentation, retrospectives, and technical decisions.
• Experience with enterprise-scale data, legacy systems, or complex stakeholder environments.

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study and/or equivalent work experience

PAY TRANSPARENCY

The hiring range for this position in Glendale, CA is $119,200.00 to $159,800.00 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. A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.

This position is with Disney Worldwide Services, Inc., which is part of a business we call The Walt Disney Company (Corporate).

To learn more about Disney's guidelines on the use of AI for candidates, click here.

Disney Worldwide Services, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Disney champions a business environment where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best stories and be relevant in a constantly evolving world.

DISABILITY ACCOMMODATION FOR EMPLOYMENT APPLICATIONS

The Walt Disney Company and its Affiliated Companies are Equal Employment Opportunity employers and welcome all job seekers including individuals with disabilities and veterans with disabilities. If you have a disability and believe you need a reasonable accommodation in order to search for a job opening or apply for a position, visit the Disney candidate disability accommodations FAQs. We will only respond to those requests that are related to the accessibility of the online application system due to a disability.

Having technical issues? View the FAQs for help.