Distinguished Applied Software Engineer, Ad Platforms

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 combined technology with creativity to build world-class products, enhance storytelling, and drive velocity, innovation, and scalability for our businesses. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Whether that’s evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of 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, powering advertising performance, innovation, and value across sports, news, and entertainment content on all platforms. Our teams design and scale the systems that enable premium ad-supported experiences across Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, ABC, and more.

Job Summary:

As Distinguished Engineer and AI Architect for Ad Platforms, you will serve as the principal technical visionary guiding Disney’s global AI-enabled transformation of Ad Platforms. You drive strategic direction, hands-on architecture, and change leadership for next-generation ad systems leveraging Generative AI, LLMs, predictive modeling, streaming intelligence, and reinforcement learning. Your work will transform ad decisioning, personalization, creative optimization, and viewer experience, directly impacting revenue, operational efficiency, and the quality of engagement across millions of concurrent streaming sessions.

You are both a strategic architect and hands-on technical leader—setting the vision, driving execution, mentoring teams, and shaping industry standards for AI-powered technology advertising. As a technical leader at the highest level of our engineering organization, you will partner with senior engineers, product leaders, and business stakeholders to define and realize a scalable, privacy-safe, and intelligent ads platform. You’ll be responsible for driving architectural excellence across distributed systems, generative Ai machine learning infrastructure, real-time decision engines, and data platforms.

Success Profile & Metrics

• Impact should be visible inside and outside Disney: transforming ad experience, improving business metrics, shaping industry standards, and fostering a culture of technical excellence and innovation.

• Achievements in year one: delivery of AI-enabled architecture for ad platforms, strategic partnership with business leaders, clear improvement in platform performance and economic efficiency, and external visibility in the industry.

If you thrive where industry-leading technology meets storytelling, and want to drive the future of media, advertising, and AI platforms, then this is your role.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

Ad Technology AI Strategy & Architecture

Design, implement, and govern scalable artificial intelligence, machine learning, and Generative Al solutions. Bridge business strategy with technical execution, leading teams to build robust, secure, and high-performance Al models, while driving data strategy, vendor evaluation, and cloud-native integration to enhance organizational capabilities.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategic Architecture: Design end-to-end AI/ML systems and frameworks, ensuring scalability, security, and alignment with business objectives.

• AI/LLM Development: Lead the adoption of GenAI, LLMs, and advanced analytics into core business processes, including model training, optimization, and
API deployment.

• Platform & Data Engineering: Architect modern data platforms, data pipelines, and cloud-native systems for Al workloads.

• Governance & Ethics: Establish Al governance frameworks, ensuring compliance with privacy standards and regulations.

• Technical Leadership: Mentor engineering teams, collaborate with stakeholders (C-level), and drive "build vs. buy" decisions for Al tools.

• Performance Optimization: Optimize Al models for speed and cost efficiency, including GPU acceleration and model quantization.

• Lead the development and integration of Generative AI systems to optimize/adapt ad creatives using multimodal models (text, image, video).

• Build and scale dynamic creative optimization (DCO) engines for personalized ad experiences.

• Implement vector databases, embedding-based retrieval, and semantic matching for modern audience targeting and context relevance

• Define the end-to-end technical architecture for new AI-driven ad serving systems, balancing vision-setting with technical hands-on leadership.

• Design systems that leverage LLMs for real-time metadata enrichment, contextual understanding, and precision viewer intent prediction.

• Architect ultra low latency inference pathways for sub-millisecond ad decisioning at global scale (live sports, premieres, etc).

• Develop long-term architectural roadmaps propelling Disney’s transition to fully automated, intelligent ad delivery.

Platform & Data Engineering at Scale

• Drive streaming data pipeline design and execution—processing billions of events daily, partnering deeply with data engineering teams.

• Oversee real-time feature stores, online/offline training, and continuous learning loops.

• Lead cloud-native AI infrastructure strategy (GPU clusters, autoscaling, cost-aware orchestration).

• Ensure platform resiliency, observability, and high availability for mission-critical AI workloads.

Technical Leadership, Governance & Vendor Strategy

• Conduct high-impact buy vs build evaluations for AI tools, Ad Tech (DSP/SSP), clean-room, and measurement systems; influence M&A/partner decisions as needed.

• Establish AI governance protocols on privacy (GDPR, CCPA), responsible usage, transparency, and algorithmic fairness.

• Partner with legal, privacy, and data ethics experts for compliant data usage across AI pipelines.

• Serve as a senior technical advisor to VP, C-suite, and business leaders—translating complex technical concepts into actionable business strategies.

• Elevate organizational AI literacy by mentoring Principal and Senior Principal Engineers,; set architectural and technical standards.

• Champion transformation and organizational change—driving excellence in developer experience, process, and delivery for AI initiatives.

Performance Optimization & Economic Efficiency

• Lead initiatives to optimize inference runtimes (model quantization, distillation, hardware-aware tuning).

• Develop reinforcement learning agents to optimize long-term yield, balancing revenue with viewer experience and retention.

• Establish and monitor performance KPIs for AI-driven ad decisioning, creative optimization, and marketplace efficiency.

• Drive reductions in total cost of ownership (compute, storage, training cycles) for large-scale AI systems.

External Thought Leadership & Industry Influence

• Represent Disney in technical forums, conferences, standards organizations, and through patents/publications.

• Share innovations and shape industry best practices for AI and Ad Tech systems.

The hiring range for this position in Seattle, WA is $304,900.00 – $408,900.00 per year. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and 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.