Senior Backend Engineer – Scalable Data & ML Platforms

The Walt Disney Company (France); San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 155,000 - 208,000; Full time

Job summary

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology in San Francisco seeks a Senior Development Engineer to design, build, and maintain backend services using Java and Scala. You will develop scalable systems for user enablement, run large-scale offline ETL pipelines, and deploy ML models aligned with core services.

The role emphasizes reliability, performance, and collaboration with cross-functional teams in a fast-paced, innovative environment. Strong distributed data skills are essential.

Qualifications

• BS in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 5+ years of software development experience with Java/Scala.
• Experience building large-scale production backend services.
• Distributed systems, data processing, service reliability and performance optimization.
• Experience with offline ETL pipelines and large-scale data processing.
• Maintaining and deploying ML models for critical services.
• Strong DB design and data maintenance experience.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, dynamic engineering environment.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain backend services using Java and Scala.
• Develop scalable systems for User Enablement capabilities.
• Build, operate, and optimize offline ETL pipelines that process massive data volumes.
• Maintain and deploy ML models for critical backend services.
• Improve service performance, scalability, stability, and operational excellence.
• Diagnose, debug, and resolve production issues across distributed backend systems.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including product, data, platform, and infrastructure teams.
• Develop and maintain automation test frameworks, test tools, and software quality practices.
• Contribute to architecture discussions and help evolve services to support long-term business growth.

Skills

Java/Scala Backend

Distributed systems

Data processing/ETL

Backend testing/QA automation

Problem solving/independence

Communication/collaboration

Education

BS in Computer Science or related field

MS in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Spark

Kafka

Airflow

Hadoop

Job description

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology in San Francisco seeks a Senior Development Engineer to design, build, and maintain backend services using Java and Scala. You will develop scalable systems for user enablement, run large-scale offline ETL pipelines, and deploy ML models aligned with core services.

The role emphasizes reliability, performance, and collaboration with cross-functional teams in a fast-paced, innovative environment. Strong distributed data skills are essential.