Mgr Software Engineering

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.

Product Engineering

Product Engineering is a unified team responsible for the engineering of Disney Entertainment & ESPN digital and streaming products and platforms. This includes product engineering, media engineering, quality assurance, engineering behind personalization, commerce, lifecycle, and identity.

The Playback Services team is responsible for building the core technology that delivers media streams to millions of viewers worldwide — powering seamless, high-quality experiences on Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+.

As a Manager of Software Engineering within Playback Services, you will lead the Media Security team, which owns critical services for protecting our content and enabling secure viewing everywhere. Your team is responsible for end-to-end delivery of advanced Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions, enforcing media rights, and supporting secure offline downloads.

You will own the design, development, and operational excellence of these services, ensuring they are highly available, performant, and scalable to meet the demands of millions of fans globally.

This role requires strong expertise in functional programming (particularly in Scala), as well as a passion for solving complex distributed systems challenges. You’ll combine hands-on technical leadership with people development — empowering your team to innovate and execute at the highest standards while protecting the stories that matter most to Disney and our viewers.

If you're excited to lead a mission-critical security-focused engineering team, embrace end-to-end ownership, and work on sophisticated distributed systems at massive scale, we’d love to hear from you.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a high-performing team of engineers, fostering an inclusive, collaborative, and growth-oriented culture.

• Coach, mentor, and support engineers through regular feedback, career development planning, and performance management.

• Partner closely with product managers, designers, and technical program managers to define requirements, prioritize roadmaps, and ensure alignment with business goals and user needs.

• Guide the design and delivery of scalable, highly available, and performant systems that support millions of global users across Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+.

• Provide technical leadership through architectural direction, design reviews, and thoughtful decision-making to drive long-term platform health.

• Establish and enforce engineering best practices and operational standards to ensure code quality, reliability, and maintainability.

• Own executional accountability for project delivery, ensuring timelines, milestones, and quality targets are met consistently.

• Champion a culture of operational excellence, including continuous improvement in monitoring, alerting, incident management, and postmortem processes.

• Contribute to the broader Disney technical community through knowledge sharing, presentations, and cross-team collaboration initiatives.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science (or related field), or equivalent practical experience.

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with at least 2 years in a formal engineering management or technical leadership role.

• Proven track record of leading and developing engineering teams, including performance management, mentorship, and fostering team growth.

• Demonstrated ability to drive complex technical projects from ideation through delivery, balancing technical excellence with business needs.

• Strong experience designing and delivering backend systems in a high-scale, production environment.

• Solid understanding of functional programming concepts and hands-on experience with Scala (Cats, Cats Effect, Tagless Final).

• Experience collaborating with cross-functional partners (product, design, TPMs) to define priorities and deliver impactful solutions.

• Deep understanding of async programming models and concurrency principles.

• Proficiency with modern development tooling, including Git, CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Jenkins), containerization (e.g., Docker), and cloud platforms such as AWS.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to clearly articulate technical concepts and influence stakeholders.

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in Seattle, WA and in New York City, NY is $172,282 to $231,110 per year; the hiring range for this position in Santa Monica/Burbank/Glendale/L.A., California and in Bristol, Connecticut is $164,492 to $220,660; the hiring range for this position in San Francisco is $180,154 to $241,670; and the hiring range for this position in North Carolina is $156,620 to $210,100 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.