Principal Software Engineer

Disneyland Hong Kong; Santa Monica, Seattle, Morrisville, New York (CA, WA, NC, NY); On-site; USD 184,000 - 248,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a dynamic team at an innovative company that is redefining the media landscape. As a Principal Software Engineer, you will play a crucial role in building and operating critical backend services that enhance user experiences across popular streaming platforms. Collaborate with talented engineers, data scientists, and product teams to create cutting-edge recommendation systems that delight millions of viewers daily. This position offers the chance to work on high-impact projects in a fast-paced environment, where your contributions will directly influence the future of entertainment. If you're passionate about technology and eager to make a difference, this opportunity is perfect for you!

Benefits

Medical Benefits

Financial Benefits

Flexible Schedule

Bonus Opportunities

Qualifications

• 10+ years experience in backend services with a focus on high-availability.
• Strong knowledge of JVM services and ML model implementation.

Responsibilities

• Drive cross-team projects and design new solutions for backend services.
• Write code, optimize existing services, and communicate progress effectively.

Skills

Backend Services Development

Asynchronous Programming

Object-Oriented Programming

Functional Programming

Agile/Scrum Practices

Communication Skills

Data-Driven Project Management

Education

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science

Equivalent Work Experience

Tools

AWS

Datadog

Splunk

Grafana

CI/CD Pipelines

Job description

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we’re reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world’s most beloved stories while also transforming Disney’s media business for the future. Whether that’s evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

A few reasons why we think you’d love working for Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

• Building the future of Disney’s media business: DE&E Technologists are designing and building the infrastructure that will power Disney’s media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.
• Reach & Scale: The products and platforms this group builds and operates delight millions of consumers every minute of every day – from Disney+ and Hulu, to ABC News and Entertainment, to ESPN and ESPN+, and much more.
• Innovation: We develop and execute groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news.

The Content Experience & Delivery team builds systems that provide data at scale to teams across Disney+, Hulu, and Star+. We implement reliable, high-request services that deliver data that helps power streaming user experiences, across web, mobile, and living room devices. We are looking for a software engineer who wants to build and operate these critical services that support all of our users!

We're a fast-paced, dynamic, collaborative and fun team, and looking forward to finding out more about you!

You'll join a hardworking group of engineers who strive to create the best-in-class Recommendations & Discovery experiences for hundreds of millions of customers across Disney+, Hulu, ABC and ESPN. You will collaborate with Data Science/ML and Product teams to innovate on, develop and operate Recommendation Systems at scale.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you will collaborate closely with engineers, project managers, and product managers to find the best solution for our viewers. You will drive projects end-to-end: designing the initial solution; finding alignment with stakeholders; execution of the necessary code; and overseeing the deployment of services to production. Members of the team look to your code and documentation as examples of What To Do. You value good-faith collaboration, driving best practices, and promoting excellence on your team. If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you!

Responsibilities:

• Independently drive and champion cross-team projects.
• Expertly break down work at the initiative and epic levels, setting project milestones with reasonable deadlines.
• Design new solutions and ensure alignment across engineering and product teams.
• Prioritize work within a project to deliver on the most necessary or urgent requirements.
• Write code to implement new features or optimize existing services.
• Effectively communicate with stakeholders on project progress.
• Anticipate and mitigate risk on projects.
• Determine the most efficient means to sufficiently test new code: unit tests, integration tests, performance tests, etc.
• Participate in a 24/7 on-call rotation for our tier-1 critical services facing millions of users worldwide.
• Use logs, monitoring tools, and work with developers to determine root causes across distributed components.
• Set best practices for the team for on-call responsibilities such as deployments, monitoring, and investigating incidents.
• Perform code reviews for members of the team, bearing a sense of responsibility for approved code.
• Coach and mentor teammates in an open, respectful, flexible, empathetic manner. Help onboard new team members.
• Actively participate in daily stand-ups and other scrum ceremonies.

Basic Qualifications

• Minimum of 10 years of related experience crafting and operating backend services.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience.
• 3+ years of related experience crafting and operating large-scale, high-availability backend services.
• Experience with algorithms and ML model implementation & operation at scale for consumer facing experiences.
• Demonstrated knowledge crafting and operating JVM services.
• Proven track record of designing and driving consensus on backend architectures.
• Demonstrated knowledge of asynchronous programming.
• Demonstrated knowledge of object-oriented programming patterns.
• Demonstrated knowledge of functional programming patterns.
• Demonstrated knowledge of source control systems and CI/CD pipelines.
• 1+ years experience operating within a Public Cloud Provider (e.g., AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud).
• Experience with observability tools for metrics, logging, and monitoring (e.g., Datadog, Splunk, Grafana).
• Ability to design and understand high-level architecture and frameworks as well as dive deep into individual technical components and systems.
• Ability to pragmatically drive technical projects with an analytical and data-driven approach.
• Demonstrated knowledge of AGILE/Scrum practices.
• Skilled at work breakdown and task estimation.
• Strong communication skills and a desire to share your knowledge with team members and others across Disney Streaming.

Preferred Qualifications

• Demonstrated knowledge of messaging technologies (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, SQS, etc.)
• Experience working with remote global teams and a flexible schedule to meet in different time zones.

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in Seattle, WA or New York, NY is $193,100 to $258,900 per year and in Los Angeles, CA is $184,300 to $247,100 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.

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, visit the Disney candidate disability accommodations FAQs. We will only respond to those requests that are related to the accessibility of the online application system due to a disability.