Lead Product Software Engineer

The Walt Disney Company; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 171,000 - 229,000; Full time

Job summary

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is seeking a lead engineer to own the analytics platform used across Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN. The role focuses on agentic analytics, NL queries, and AI-generated insights with human-in-the-loop review.

You will drive architectural decisions and mentor engineers across teams. You will build a full-stack solution with a React frontend and Node.js/Python/Java services, emphasizing performance, scalability, and config-driven dashboards.

Qualifications

• 7+ years building highly scalable, full-stack web apps serving millions of users.
• Experience with agentic software development: AI coding agents and agent-driven workflows.
• Proven track record delivering agentic analytics solutions in production (LLMs/agents).
• Expert-level React, TypeScript, JavaScript, with strong Node.js; full-stack capabilities.
• Experience defining API specs and cross-team collaboration.
• Strong performance-engineering fundamentals (data fetch, caching).
• Mentored engineers and led projects end-to-end.
• Bachelor’s degree in CS, information systems, software or related field.

Responsibilities

• Design and deliver agentic analytics experiences: NL/QA, AI-assisted dashboards, and AI-generated insights with human review.
• Lead projects end to end: scope problems, write specs, own architectural decisions.
• Build across the stack: React frontend, Node.js/Python/Java services, data integration.
• Ensure performance and scale: optimize rendering, caching, and data fetching with robust testing and observability.
• Mentor engineers, drive standards, and align cross-team technical direction.

Skills

React

TypeScript

JavaScript

Node.js

Agentic analytics

LLMs

Performance optimization

Mentorship

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Python

Java

Job description

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:

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.

About the role

We're making AI the fastest path from a business question to a trusted answer. You'll be a lead engineer on the team building the analytics platform that people across Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN use to understand the business, from an analyst checking a metric to executives deciding what to do next. Increasingly they get there by asking in natural language and letting AI agents assemble, explain, and explore the data, with people in the loop on what ships.

The platform spans a performance-tuned React front end, the services behind it, and an integration layer over our BI and data-warehouse stack, purpose-built so that data-rich dashboards load fast, stay trustworthy, and can be assembled and changed through configuration rather than one-off code.

You'll lead major projects across the stack and set the technical direction for the work you own, partnering with the initiative's principal engineer on overall architecture. You'll raise the bar on quality and performance and work at the seam between product, design, and data and analytics partners, turning ambiguous questions into durable systems.

Responsibilities

AI and agentic analytics

Design and deliver agentic analytics experiences: natural-language and AI-assisted dashboard authoring, agent-accessible surfaces, and AI-generated insights with human-in-the-loop review. Build the foundations these depend on a semantic, machine-readable representation of metrics and surfaces so agents can do what the app can, plus the evaluation and guardrails that keep AI output trustworthy.

Technical leadership and architecture

Lead projects end to end: partner with product, design, and data teams to scope ambiguous problems and distill requirements into clear design and technical specifications. Own the high-leverage architectural decisions for the projects you lead (rendering, data fetching, caching, state, service boundaries, API contracts), document them, and guide other engineers in carrying them out.

Build across the stack

Build the full path: a responsive React front end, the Node.js (and Python or Java) services behind it, and the APIs and data-integration layer that feed it. Evolve a configuration and schema-driven system that lets new dashboards and metrics ship through config and CI validation rather than bespoke code, treating product surfaces as data.

Performance and scale

Engineer for dashboard-shaped traffic across client and server: optimize data fetching, caching, request batching, and progressive and streaming rendering so complex, high-cardinality views load fast and scale to a large concurrent audience. Quality and craft Write, maintain, standardize, and enforce code quality through testing (including test-driven development where it fits), code review, observability, and accessible, resilient UI. See work through from specification to production and ongoing operation.

Influence and mentorship

Mentor engineers at all levels, including senior engineers, through code review, pairing, and knowledge sharing; build trust, set goals, and give constructive feedback. Drive the evolution of the team's practices and standards, including agentic engineering workflows that raise how fast and how well the team ships, and build cross-team consensus for technical direction.

Basic Qualifications

• ● 7+ years building highly scalable, performant full-stack web applications serving millions of users and requests.
• ● A regular practitioner of agentic software development: AI coding agents and agent-driven workflows are a core part of how you build, and you can raise a team's effectiveness with them.
• ● A track record of delivering agentic analytics solutions in production: analytics or data products built on LLMs or agents (for example, natural-language querying, agent-driven insight generation, or prompt-to-dashboard).
• ● Expert-level command of React, TypeScript, and JavaScript, with strong Node.js; comfortable working across the full stack, from UI through back-end services and APIs.
• ● Proven track record architecting sophisticated technical changes and driving cross-team consensus on the approach.
• ● Experience defining and implementing API specifications in collaboration with service and back-end teams.
• ● Strong performance-engineering fundamentals (rendering, data fetching, caching) for data-heavy or high-traffic systems.
• ● Track record of owning projects beginning to end and driving complex problems to root cause and resolution.
• ● Demonstrated ability to mentor and grow engineers, including senior engineers, by building trust and giving clear feedback.
• ● Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software or Electrical Engineering, a comparable field, and/or equivalent work experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• ● Working proficiency in Python and/or Java for back-end services, data tooling, or integrations.
• ● Shipped production React/Node.js applications with high availability and throughput on a cloud platform (e.g., AWS).
• ● Experience with data visualization at scale: charting, large and high-cardinality datasets, interactive and filterable dashboards.
• ● Familiarity with BI and data-warehouse stacks (e.g., Looker/LookML, Snowflake, Databricks) and partnering with data and analytics teams.
• ● Experience with configuration-driven or schema-driven UI systems (product defined as data or "as code").
• ● Expert understanding of web accessibility (WCAG) fundamentals.
• ● Broad knowledge of web standards and emerging technologies

The hiring range for this position in NYC is $163,100 - $218,700 per year and in San Francisco, CA is $170,500.00-$228,600.00 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.

Job ID: 10149877

Location: San Francisco,California

Job Posting Company: Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology

The Walt Disney Company and its Affiliated Companies are Equal Employment Opportunity employers and welcome all job seekers including individuals with disabilities and veterans with disabilities. If you have a disability and believe you need a reasonable accommodation in order to search for a job opening or apply for a position, email [e-mail] with your request. This email address is not for general employment inquiries or correspondence. We will only respond to those requests that are related to the accessibility of the online application system due to a disability.