Lead Software Engineer

The Walt Disney Company; New York (NY); On-site; USD 163,000 - 219,000; Full time

Job summary

The Walt Disney Company is seeking a Lead Software Engineer in New York/Los Angeles to design AI-powered, distributed systems for Disney’s streaming platform. You will build autonomous agents, ML models, and real-time pipelines that transform telemetry into automated detection and proactive insights.

You will collaborate with product and platform teams to embed intelligence in production systems, deliver end-to-end features, and lead code reviews in a fast-paced AI-native environment.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend development experience with AI-powered apps and scalable APIs.
• Strong experience with Spark/PySpark and Python.
• Proven ability to design production-grade, scalable systems.
• Expertise with AI/ML including foundation models and tooling.

Responsibilities

• Architect and implement distributed systems using real-time telemetry and AI-driven anomaly detection.
• Define patterns and scaling strategies for agentic AI systems with large foundation models.
• Develop data pipelines transforming telemetry into actionable insights and detections.
• Create scalable APIs delivering predictive signals and insights to teams and tools.
• Embed intelligence into incident response, release validation, and subscriber experience workflows.
• Drive observability, reliability, and developer productivity with applied AI.
• Set engineering standards, perform code reviews, and mentor junior engineers.

Skills

Backend development

Spark / PySpark

Python

AI/ML engineering

Foundation models

PyTorch / TensorFlow

Git & CI/CD

Docker / Kubernetes

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

LangChain

LangGraph

PyTorch

TensorFlow

Job description

Lead Software Engineer

Job ID 10157759 Location New York, New York, United States / Glendale, California, United States Business Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology Date posted Aug. 18, 2026

Job Summary:

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:

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 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 Observability & Insights group ensures that Disney Streaming’s distributed systems are reliable, performant, and transparent. We build the telemetry, dashboards, alerting, insights pipelines, and developer experience tooling that enable engineers across the organization to understand system health and take action quickly.

Job Summary:

As a Lead Software Engineer, you will design and build intelligent, AI driven systems that enhance the reliability and performance of Disney’s large scale streaming ecosystem. You will develop agentic systems, machine learning models, and real-time pipelines that transform telemetry, logs, and user signals into automated detection, root cause analysis, and proactive insights.

In this role, these autonomous agents will reason over complex system behavior, identifying issues in real time and driving faster resolution across Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN. You will partner closely with engineering, product, and platform teams to embed this intelligence directly into operational workflows, improving system resilience and subscriber experience at scale.

You’ll also deliver high quality features end-to-end and contribute to system design and code reviews and begin owning components of production systems within a fast paced, AI native engineering environment.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Architect, design, and implement production-grade, distributed systems that leverage real-time telemetry signals and AI-driven anomaly detection to optimize the health, resilience, and reliability of the global streaming ecosystem.
• Define the architectural patterns and scaling strategies for agentic AI systems powered by modern foundation models (e.g., Claude, GPT-4) to enable automated reasoning and predictive modeling for real-time system health and reliability
• Develop end-to-end data and decisioning pipelines that transform telemetry, logs, and user signals into actionable insights, automated detection, and root cause analysis
• Create and deploy scalable APIs and services that deliver predictive signals, explainability, and insights to engineering teams, operational tools, and product stakeholders
• Partner cross-functionally to embed intelligence into workflows (incident response, release validation, subscriber experience insights), improving speed and reducing operational overhead
• Drive innovation in observability, reliability, and developer productivity through applied AI and new approaches
• Define and drive the team’s engineering standards and best practices when it comes to clean, well-tested code, thorough code reviews, and mature CI/CD, owning components of production systems and mentor junior engineers

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic Qualifications

• 7+ years of applicable experience in backend development, including building AI-powered or data driven applications and scalable APIs (e.g. FastAPI, Flask)
• Proficiency in Spark, Pyspark, Python or similar programming language
• Experience implementing production-grade systems at scale within a fast-paced, distributed environment.
• Strong AI/ML engineering experience, including orchestrating foundation models (e.g. Claude, OpenAI, Qwen) using frameworks like LangChain or LangGraph.
• Familiarity with developing, training, or fine-tuning models using frameworks like PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Proficiency with AI-assisted development tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code) to accelerate engineering velocity.
• Experience with modern development practices, including version control (GitHub), containerization (Docker), and cloud-native deployments (AWS/EKS).
• Strong understanding of API design, microservices architecture, and standard SDLC workflows.
• Strong analytical and technical skills to troubleshoot issues, perform rapid iteration and quickly come up with possible solutions
• Strong collaboration and communication skills, with the ability to work cross-functionally and clearly explain complex technical concepts

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with observability platforms (e.g., Datadog, Grafana, Conviva) and handling high-volume telemetry data.
• Familiarity with large-scale data platforms and distributed data processing tools (e.g., PySpark, Pandas, Databricks, Snowflake).
• Knowledge of prompt design, model evaluation, and fine-tuning foundation models (GPT-4, Claude).

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience

The hiring range for this position in New York, NY is $163,100 to $218,700 per year, and in Glendale, CA is $155,700 to $208,700 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.

About Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology:

At Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology, we’re blending imagination and innovation to reimagine the ways people experience and engage with the world’s most beloved stories and products. Our work is wide range and deeply sophisticated. We create amazing experiences, transform the future of media, and build products and platforms that enable the connection between people everywhere and the stories and sports they love.

Disney’s ability to marry world-class technology with one-of-a-kind creativity makes us unique. It is at the heart of our past, present, and future. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers.

About The Walt Disney Company:

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise that includes three core business segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Experiences. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family. Disney’s stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.

This position is with Disney Entertainment & Sports LLC , which is part of a business we call Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology .

Disney Entertainment & Sports LLC is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, military or veteran status, medical condition, genetic information or disability, or any other basis prohibited by federal, state or local law. Disney champions a business environment where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best stories and be relevant in a constantly evolving world.

Disability Accommodation For Employment Applications

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.