Lead Real-Time Data Platform Engineer

Disney Experiences; Bay Lake (FL); On-site; USD 148,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Disney Experiences in Orlando is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to own end-to-end delivery of real-time, event-driven systems. You will design, build, and operate backend services and streaming pipelines using Java and AWS, ensuring scalability, observability, and fault tolerance.

This hands-on lead role requires mentoring, architecture influence, and collaboration across teams to deliver high-impact features.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience in distributed, production systems.
• 3+ years of cross-team technical leadership and end-to-end ownership of multi-service initiatives.
• Expert in Java and AWS services; experience with real-time streaming pipelines.
• Experience with AWS IoT Core, Kinesis, Kafka, MQTT.
• Strong understanding of event-driven architecture and observability.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate real-time, event-driven systems ingesting data from edge devices.
• Develop backend services and streaming pipelines using Java and Apache Flink to transform data into reliable events.
• Architect and operate production systems on AWS with focus on scalability, observability, and cost efficiency.
• Lead end-to-end delivery for multiple systems, balancing domain goals and technical constraints.
• Lead technical decisions and act as owner for critical components of the platform.
• Build clean, versioned event schemas and APIs that integrate with downstream systems.
• Mentor junior developers and present to executives.
• Engage in estimation and planning of sophisticated scalable projects.
• This position may require travel 10-15%.

Skills

Java

AWS

Kinesis

Kafka

MQTT

Distributed systems

Real-time data

Cross-team leadership

Architecture

Education

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS ECS/EKS

Lambda

DynamoDB

S3

CloudWatch

Job description

Disney Experiences in Orlando is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to own end-to-end delivery of real-time, event-driven systems. You will design, build, and operate backend services and streaming pipelines using Java and AWS, ensuring scalability, observability, and fault tolerance.

This hands-on lead role requires mentoring, architecture influence, and collaboration across teams to deliver high-impact features.