Data Engineer I

The Walt Disney Company (France); Santa Monica (CA); On-site; USD 89,000 - 119,000; Full time

Job summary

The Walt Disney Company in Santa Monica, CA is seeking a Data Engineer to design, develop, and maintain data pipelines powering acquisition reporting and marketing analytics. You will work across AWS, Databricks, Unity Catalog, Snowflake, and Airflow to build reliable, scalable solutions for ingesting and preparing marketing data.

You will collaborate with senior engineers, analytics partners, and marketing stakeholders to ensure data accuracy, timeliness, and delivery for dashboards and

Qualifications

• Strong proficiency in SQL with analytical capabilities.
• Hands-on experience with PySpark and Spark SQL in production.
• Good understanding of data modeling and ETL/ELT design patterns.
• Experience building pipelines in Databricks, Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, governance.
• Experience in AWS services and Airflow.
• Experience with JSON/Parquet/CSV formats and Git-based workflows.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain ETL/ELT pipelines for acquisition reporting using Databricks, PySpark, SQL, and Unity Catalog.
• Migrate Snowflake SQL scripts to Databricks UC and validate results; implement governance practices.
• Develop ingestion processes for marketing vendor data and ensure data quality.
• Implement data quality checks, monitoring, and incident triage with Databricks, Snowflake, Airflow.
• Collaborate with Data Reliability Engineering for SLA monitoring and logging improvements.
• Work with analytics/marketing partners to meet data requirements for dashboards.
• Participate in code reviews, documentation, and framework/tool improvements.

Skills

SQL

PySpark

Data modeling

Databricks

AWS

Airflow

Git/GitHub

Communication

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS/IS/Software/Data Engineering

Tools

Delta Lake

Unity Catalog

Snowflake

S3/IAM/EC2/Glue

Databricks UC

Job description

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.

Commerce, Data & Identity provides the core product management functions for areas crucial to Disney’s media businesses. These include initiatives and products that power digital commerce, identity, and growth, as well as those that reach uniquely across The Walt Disney Company enterprise, such as messaging and privacy, among others. Additionally, it is responsible for the data engineering, science, and products for Disney Entertainment & ESPN, along with their interconnection with other parts of The Walt Disney Company.

About the Team

The Acquisition Marketing Engineering team owns the ingestion, modeling, and activation of acquisition and lifecycle marketing data across multiple platforms. We build and maintain large scale data pipelines that ingest vendor data (paid media, mobile attribution, search, social, display, email, and more), land it in cloud storage, and transform it into analytics‑ready datasets powering acquisition reporting tools, dashboards, and executive insights. You will be a member of the engineering team driving multiple transformations from end-to-end.

Job Summary:

The Data Engineer will support the design, development, and maintenance of data pipelines and transformation workflows that power acquisition reporting and marketing analytics. You will work across AWS, Databricks, Unity Catalog, Snowflake, and Airflow to help build reliable and scalable solutions for ingesting and preparing marketing platform data.

You will collaborate with senior engineers, analytics partners, and marketing stakeholders to ensure data accuracy, consistency, and timely delivery for downstream dashboards and reporting. This role involves hands‑on development, troubleshooting, and contributing to the ongoing modernization of our data ecosystem.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Assist in building and maintaining ETL/ELT pipelines for acquisition reporting using Databricks, PySpark, SQL, and Unity Catalog under the guidance of senior engineers.
• Support the migration of existing Snowflake SQL scripts and transformations into Databricks UC by updating queries, validating outputs, and helping implement governance best practices.
• Contribute to developing ingestion processes for marketing vendor data, including data parsing, normalization, and quality validations.
• Implement and maintain foundational data quality checks, monitoring alerts, and issue triage workflows using Databricks, Snowflake, Airflow, and internal tooling.
• Partner with the Data Reliability Engineering team to assist with SLA monitoring, simple incident troubleshooting, and logging improvements.
• Collaborate with analytics and marketing partners to understand data requirements and ensure accuracy of datasets used in dashboards and reporting.
• Support performance tuning, logging improvements, and general pipeline reliability work.
• Participate in engineering best practices, including code reviews, documentation, and contributing to shared frameworks and tools.

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

• Strong proficiency in SQL (analytical SQL, complex joins, window functions).
• Hands‑on experience with PySpark and/or Spark SQL in production.
• Good understanding of data modeling, ETL/ELT design patterns, and distributed data processing.
• Experience building pipelines in Databricks, including Delta Lake, Unity Catalog, data governance, and Lakehouse patterns.
• Experience in AWS (S3, IAM, EC2, Glue, Lambda, or related services).
• Experience with Airflow or similar orchestration tools.
• Experience building robust ingestion pipelines and working with semi-structured formats (JSON, Parquet, CSV).
• Experience with Git/GitHub, CI/CD, and modern DevOps practices.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to work with cross‑functional partners.

Required Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Advanced Mathematics, Statistics, Data Engineering or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience.

The hiring range for this position in Santa Monica, CA is $89,000 to $119,300 per year based on a 40 hour work week. The amount of hours scheduled per week may vary based on business needs. 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.