Lead Software Engineer - AI and Observability

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

Job summary

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology in New York, NY is seeking a Lead Software Engineer to design and build AI-driven, production-grade systems for a large-scale streaming ecosystem. You will work with engineering, product, and platform teams to embed intelligence into operations and improve reliability.

You’ll develop agentic models, real-time pipelines, and scalable APIs using modern frameworks, contribute to code reviews, and mentor junior engineers in a fast-paced,

Qualifications

• 7+ years of backend development with AI/data-driven apps and scalable APIs.
• Proficiency in Spark, PySpark, Python.
• Experience at scale in distributed environments.
• AI/ML with foundation models using LangChain/LangGraph.
• Familiar with PyTorch or TensorFlow.
• Experience with AI-assisted tooling (Claude Code).
• Proficient in GitHub, Docker, AWS/EKS.
• Strong API design, microservices, SDLC workflows.
• Analytical mindset and clear communication for cross‑functional work.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build distributed, AI-powered systems using real-time telemetry.
• Define patterns for agentic AI systems with foundation models.
• Develop data pipelines transforming telemetry into actionable insights.
• Create scalable APIs and services for engineering teams and stakeholders.
• Collaborate cross-functionally to embed intelligence into workflows.
• Drive observability, reliability, and developer productivity with AI.
• Set engineering standards and mentor junior engineers.

Skills

Backend development

AI/ML engineering

Python programming

API design

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Tools

Spark / PySpark

Python

LangChain

LangGraph

PyTorch / TensorFlow

GitHub

Docker

AWS / EKS

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:

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

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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.