Sr Software Engineer

Department/Group Overview:

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:

1. 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.

2. 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. 

3. Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms, and solve complex and distinctive technical problems.

Content Platforms & Operations is responsible for the development and ongoing advancement of the technical and operational functions driving the worldwide distribution and monetization of Disney’s linear networks and theatrical content. This includes Disney’s media supply chain and storage, network and theatrical distribution operations, media localization, network transmission and origination, and more. The global team also plays a critical role as the primary collaboration point for Product & Technology with Disney’s EMEA, APAC, and LATAM regional business teams.

The Rights & Accounting fleet oversees products and optimizes workflows that enable TWDC to monetize content including content rights and avails management, content sales and content protection, content accounting, and talent payments.

Job Summary:

The Senior Software Engineer plays a critical role in the development, quality, and continuous improvement of Disney Content Platform's Rights Management systems. This role contributes across the full software development lifecycle, including requirements analysis, solution design, application development, test automation, system integration, deployment, and operational support.

Working across Rights Management supply chain applications, the Senior Software Developer designs, builds, tests, and supports scalable solutions while ensuring high standards of software quality, reliability, and performance. The role combines software engineering and quality engineering responsibilities, including the creation of new applications and tools, enhancement of existing systems, development of automated testing frameworks, and troubleshooting and maintenance of production solutions.

This position provides technical leadership, mentors junior engineers, drives engineering best practices, and ensures the successful delivery of high-quality software solutions that support business objectives and operational excellence.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Design, develop, test, maintain, and support enterprise-scale Rights Management applications.
• Lead the implementation of complex features, technical initiatives, and software enhancements.
• Design, develop, and maintain automated testing frameworks and test automation solutions.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex application defects, test failures, and production issues.
• Partner with cross-functional teams to define requirements, develop technical solutions, and support software delivery.
• Provide technical leadership, mentoring, code reviews, and guidance on engineering standards and best practices.

Basic Qualifications:

• 5+ years of professional experience in a software engineering role.
• Strong expertise in SQL, including database objects, relational database concepts, stored procedures, query optimization, and data modeling.
• Proficient in Java and JVM languages, with hands-on experience in Spring Boot, Spring Data, Spring Integration, and other Spring frameworks.
• Solid experience across the full software development lifecycle, including continuous integration, unit and integration testing, functional testing, code reviews, and documentation.
• Experience designing, building, and integrating APIs.
• Knowledge of OAuth, authentication, authorization, and access management.
• Practical experience with AWS services such as S3, RDS, messaging, VPC, and related infrastructure.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Strong understanding of data integration concepts and workflows.
• Experience with event-driven architecture (EDA) and publish/subscribe messaging patterns (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ, SNS).
• Experience in monitoring and maintaining application health and performance.
• Skilled in applying object-oriented and functional programming principles to solve real-world software engineering problems.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills in a team environment.
• Effective time management, with the ability to break down complex problems into manageable tasks.
• Familiarity and experience with Agile methodologies.

Experience with:

• AWS (advanced cloud services and infrastructure management)
• Kafka (real-time data streaming and event processing)
• Apache Airflow (workflow orchestration and data pipeline management)
• Databricks (data engineering, analytics, and machine learning workflows)
• Snowflake (cloud data warehousing and analytics)
• PostgreSQL (advanced database features and performance tuning)
• Serverless computing (e.g., AWS Lambda or similar event-driven architectures)
• Experience with AI-assisted development tools such as Cursor, Claude, GitHub Copilot, or similar platforms is preferred.

Required Education :

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

The hiring range for this position in Los Angeles is $141,900 to $181,200 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.