Manager, Software Engineering - AI Core Engineering

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.

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. 

Here are a few reasons why we think you’d love working here:

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.

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.

Job Summary:

We are hiring a Manager, AI Core Engineering to lead a growing team of engineers building the core AI capabilities, shared services, and developer-facing web applications that accelerate AI adoption across Ad Technology. You will oversee a diverse team of backend and UI engineers at varying levels of seniority—ranging from those designing reusable agents, orchestration layers, and shared services, to those creating intuitive web interfaces for video analysis, enablement dashboards, and AI developer tooling.

As a people manager, you will coach engineers across disciplines, drive technical delivery, and partner with product, infrastructure, and governance teams to ensure solutions are safe, scalable, and aligned with enterprise standards. This role blends organizational leadership with technical depth as you will be accountable for outcomes, roadmaps, and enabling engineers to deliver their best work.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

Team Leadership & People Management

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of full stack engineers (backend-heavy) and UI-focused developers.

• Drive career development, performance management, and team culture.

• Foster an inclusive, high-performing environment.

Program & Delivery Management

• Own execution of the AI Core roadmap, ensuring timely delivery of reusable agents, services, and developer-facing web apps.

• Remove blockers, balance workloads, and track progress against objectives and key results (OKRs).

• Partner with product and TPM counterparts on planning and prioritization.

Cross-Team Collaboration

• Partner with infrastructure, data, product, and security teams to integrate AI core capabilities into enterprise and customer-facing systems.

• Represent AI Core Engineering in leadership forums, sharing updates, risks, and adoption progress.

Technical and Project Deliverable Oversight

• Guide architecture and design, review team proposals, manage capacity, and mitigate risks and blockers to keep projects on track.

• Ensure best practices for guardrails, governance, observability, and developer enablement.

• Balance priorities across backend services, AI orchestration, and UI/web application delivery.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field (Master’s preferred), or equivalent experience.

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ years in a leadership or management role.

• Expert in at least one foundational programming language, preferably Python or Java, with a track record of building production-grade systems.

• Proven experience managing teams delivering AI/ML-powered systems or developer tooling.

• Hands-on expertise with LLM APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude) and orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph).

• Experience designing and delivering multi-agent architectures and applying modern AI system design patterns.

• Experience overseeing delivery of UI/web applications alongside backend services.

• Working knowledge of test automation and modern CI/CD practices for AI and backend systems.

• Strong ability to mentor engineers, manage performance, and build team culture.

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills; able to influence across technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Set standards for code quality, test coverage, and production readiness across AI core components and web applications

Preferred Qualifications

• Prior experience managing teams that span backend and UI engineering.

• Knowledge of AI governance, safety, and observability frameworks.

• Experience integrating enterprise AI services such as AWS Bedrock or Azure AI Foundry.

• Background in developer enablement or platform engineering where shared frameworks accelerated adoption.

• Skilled at writing technical strategies, design reviews, and presenting to senior leadership.

#disneytech

The hiring range for this position in Los Angeles, CA is between $171,600 – $230,100, San Francisco, CA is between $187,900 - $252,200 and Seattle, WA $179,700 - $241,000. 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.