Principal Software Engineer

The Walt Disney Company; Seattle, Glendale, Santa Monica, New York (WA, CA, CA, NY); On-site; USD 193,000 - 259,000; Full time

Job summary

Join a dynamic team at an innovative entertainment company, where you'll lead the development of backend services that power beloved streaming platforms. As a Principal Software Engineer, you'll design and implement solutions that enhance user experiences across millions of viewers. Collaborate with talented engineers and product teams to drive projects from concept to deployment, ensuring high-quality code and best practices. This role offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of media technology in a fast-paced, collaborative environment where your contributions will make a significant impact on storytelling and entertainment worldwide.

Benefits

Medical Benefits

Financial Benefits

Flexible Schedule

Bonus Opportunities

Qualifications

• 10+ years experience in backend services development and operation.
• Strong knowledge of algorithms, ML, and JVM services.

Responsibilities

• Drive cross-team projects and design new solutions.
• Write code for new features and optimize existing services.
• Participate in on-call rotation for critical services.

Skills

Backend Services Development

Algorithms and ML Implementation

JVM Services

Asynchronous Programming

Object-Oriented Programming

Functional Programming

Agile/Scrum Practices

Communication Skills

Education

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science

Equivalent Work Experience

Tools

AWS

Datadog

Splunk

Grafana

CI/CD Pipelines

Job description

Principal Software Engineer

Job ID: 10110217

Location: Seattle, Washington, United States / Santa Monica, California, United States / Glendale, California, United States / New York, New York, United States

Business: Disney Entertainment

Date posted: Apr. 03, 2025

Job Summary:

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.

About Disney Entertainment:

At Disney Corporate you can see how the businesses behind the Company’s powerful brands come together to create the most innovative, far-reaching and admired entertainment company in the world. As a member of a corporate team, you’ll work with world-class leaders driving the strategies that keep The Walt Disney Company at the leading edge of entertainment. See and be seen by other innovative thinkers as you enable the greatest storytellers in the world to create memories for millions of families around the globe.

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 Streaming Technology LLC, which is part of a business we call Disney Entertainment.

Disney Streaming Technology 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.