Principal Product Software Engineer

The Walt Disney Company; New York (NY); On-site; USD 197,000 - 265,000; Full time

Job summary

The Walt Disney Company in New York seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead and operate core services powering Disney’s streaming and commerce platforms. You will collaborate with distributed teams across multiple organizations to build scalable, reliable systems that support millions of users.

This role emphasizes architecture, mentoring, and engineering excellence, with a focus on Java/Scala services, performance optimization, and cost-aware design in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience crafting large-scale Java/Scala services.
• Strong CS fundamentals; proficient in Java and OO languages.
• Experience with source control systems and CI/CD pipelines.
• Ability to work independently and collaboratively.
• Experience mentoring and guiding other engineers.
• Excellent communication and cross-team collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Work with a distributed team of engineers across multiple organizations.
• Identify patterns to enable scale and drive adoption of those patterns.
• Challenge architectural choices and solve problems innovatively.
• Promote consistent engineering frameworks across the organization.
• Advocate best practices and maintainable code with robust tests.
• Lead via metrics, improving performance and cost efficiency.

Skills

Java

Scala

Distributed systems

Mentoring

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Git

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

Technology is at the heart of Disney’s past, present, and future. Disney Entertainment & 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.

Our teams build systems that power all the Commerce workflows within Disney Streaming. We implement reliable, high-request services that power user experiences across web, mobile, and living room devices. We are looking for a Principal Software engineer who wants to build and operate these critical services that support all our users! We're a fast-paced, dynamic, collaborative, and fun team, and we're looking forward to learning more about you!

Responsibilities

• Work with a distributed team of engineers across multiple organizations building software collaboratively.
• Identity patterns that can help the teams scale, create proposals, and drive adoption of those patterns
• Challenge current architectural choices while collaborating to solve problems in innovative ways.
• Drive adoption of consistent technical frameworks across the organization
• Drive best engineering practices to write well-constructed and easy-to-maintain code, defensive and robust tests.
• Lead through metrics - understand application performance and costs and push for better results.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or a comparable field of study.
• 10+ years of related experience crafting large-scale, highly available Java, Scala, etc services utilizing various database and messaging technologies. Strong programming skills in Java and other object-oriented languages and a strong grasp of computer science fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, databases - SQL and noSQL, etc.)
• Experience using source control systems and CI/CD pipelines.
• An ability to work both independently and collaboratively.
• Champion cross-team projects.
• Coach and mentor other specialists on the team to ensure that all software utilizes industry best practices. Collaborate efficiently with product management, technical program management, operations, and other engineering teams to capture requirements, drive implementation, and provide transparency.
• A broad perspective on problem-solving.
• Strong communication skills and a desire to share your knowledge with team members and others.
• Experience directly managing and mentoring a team.

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in San Francisco is $206,400 - $276,700 and in New York, NY, $197,400 - $264,700 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.