Principal Software Engineer, Ad Experiences — Lead & Innovate

Disney Entertainment; Glendale (CA); On-site; USD 188,000 - 253,000; Full time

Job summary

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead design and delivery of scalable, low-latency ad-serving systems. You will mentor teams, own critical components, and collaborate across product, engineering, and operations. Expect in-office four days a week, with multiple U.S.

office locations. Join a world-class team building platforms powering Disney’s sports, entertainment, and media experiences while shaping the next generation of streaming and

Qualifications

• BS or MS in Computer Science/Engineering or relevant work experience.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience.
• Advanced proficiency with Java, such as understanding heap, multi-threading, garbage collection, profiling.
• Demonstrable analytical / problem-solving / design skills in a highly distributed and highly available services ecosystem.
• Excellent communication, collaboration skills, and a strong teamwork ethic with both technical and non-technical audiences.

Responsibilities

• Writing some and reviewing a lot of code and tests.
• Reviewing code and test implementations for best practices and algorithmic complexity.
• Available to support engineers on an On-Call shift, when needed.
• Reading requirements documentation from Product, providing a perspective on feasibility and translating into implementation tasks, and partnering with teams’ leads through execution as needed.
• Exploring, researching, implementing proofs-of-concept, and proposing solutions that will improve Ad Serving systems (reduce cost and overhead, improve maintainability, minimize the time features take to be in production, etc).
• Defining, reviewing, and documenting software and system designs in a high throughput, low latency microservices environment.
• Enhancing systems’ observability with proper metrics, monitors, and alerts.
• Foster open communication during architectural discussions, confidently defending decisions while welcoming feedback.
• Bridge the gap between diverse team requirements and technical capabilities to deliver cohesive, scalable solutions.
• Mentoring and inspiring others in all aspects of professional software development.

Skills

Java programming

Distributed systems

Multi-threading

Observability

Mentoring

Education

BS/MS in CS/Engineering

Tools

SpringBoot

DynamoDB

Redis

Kafka

Kinesis

AWS

Job description

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead design and delivery of scalable, low-latency ad-serving systems. You will mentor teams, own critical components, and collaborate across product, engineering, and operations. Expect in-office four days a week, with multiple U.S.

office locations. Join a world-class team building platforms powering Disney’s sports, entertainment, and media experiences while shaping the next generation of streaming and