Senior Principal Software Engineer

The Walt Disney Company; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 234,000 - 315,000; Full time

Job summary

The Walt Disney Company is seeking a Senior Principal Software Engineer to join their Product Engineering team in Seattle. This role involves overseeing architecture, developing scalable solutions, and mentoring other engineers. Ideal candidates will have extensive experience in software development, leadership skills, and a strong background in distributed systems and APIs.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience in designing and maintaining services and APIs.
• 5+ years of experience working across disciplines with stakeholders.
• Extensive experience with distributed systems in production environments.

Responsibilities

• Oversee architecture and solution development across services and applications.
• Coordinate with engineering leaders to define effective solutions.
• Author detailed technical design documentation.

Skills

Leadership

Communication

Problem Solving

Education

Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field

Tools

Java

Python

JavaScript

Docker

Kubernetes

Terraform

Job description

Job Posting Title:

Senior Principal Software Engineer

Req ID:

10120977

Job Description:

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

The Product Engineering team is responsible for end-to-end development for Disney’s world-class consumer-facing products, including streaming platforms Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, and digital products & experiences across ESPN, Marvel, Disney Studios, NatGeo, and ABC News. The team drives innovation at scale for millions of consumers around the world across Apple, Android, Smart TVs, game consoles, and the web, with our platforms powering core experiences like personalization, search, messaging and data.

As a Senior Principal Software Engineer on the Solutions Architecture team, you will represent the Product Engineering group as an Architect.

This entails coordinating with engineering leaders across disciplines (client applications, identity, commerce, media, content orchestration, telemetry, core services) to define the most effective solutions to business needs and engineering challenges. You will be designing, developing, and disseminating technical strategy across disciplines. This role is overseeing and influencing product solutions, with a distinct focus on backend solutions, across Disney Entertainment and ESPN Technology brands such as Disney+ and Hulu. This includes championing technical initiatives with an eye towards unifying client and service teams on scalable solutions that power resilient customer experiences.

The role requires an inherent desire to quickly deep dive on engineering and business use cases with the ability to provide multiple solutions, weighing both the value created and effort required by the decisions you will make. This includes authoring detailed technical documentation, actively participating in technical proposals with peers, and coaching/mentoring other principal developers and architects throughout the company.

Responsibilities:

• Oversee architecture and solution development across services and applications. Champion scalable solutions that power resilient customer experiences.
• Coordinate with engineering leaders across all disciplines to define effective requirements and technical solutions.
• Author detailed technical design documentation
• Setting and steering architectural goals across the Product Engineering organization. Coaching/mentoring other principal developers and architects to meet those goals.
• Rapidly address production issues and clearly articulate root cause analyses

Basic Qualifications

• 12+ years of experience designing, building and maintaining services and APIs that support globally scaled customer facing applications.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field, or equivalent training or work experience.
• 5+ years of experience working across disciplines such as product, program, and business stakeholders to refine plans and strategy.
• Extensive experience delivering and maintaining distributed systems in production environments.
• Proven experience with complex caching and streaming data systems.
• Demonstrates strong leadership, facilitation, and presentation skills, with a proven ability to influence business and technology leadership without authority.
• Possesses excellent written and verbal communication skills, and is well-organized, capable of delivering through ambiguity, working both independently and collaboratively, and multi-tasking amongst multiple priorities.
• Regularly conceptualize and communicate innovative ideas and proactively share knowledge with others.

Preferred Qualifications

• Authority in the streaming industry, possessing extensive expertise in the architecture and management of global streaming platforms.
• Experience with Java or Python and JavaScript.
• Experience with documentation tools such as: Smithy, OpenAPI, Plantuml, Lucidchart.
• Exposure to Datastore technologies: S3, Redis, DDB, Elastic Search, Databricks.
• Experience with event messaging and data pipelines: SQS, Kinesis, Kafka, Flink, Spark.
• Background with network protocols and tools: Load balancers, Envoy/Istio, WebSockets, CDNs, Charles, Fiddler.
• Experience with CI/CD, Containerization, and IaC tools: Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Spinnaker.
• Familiarity with common cloud infrastructure environments and solutions.

The hiring range for this position in Seattle, WA is $234,400 to $314,300 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.

Job Posting Segment:

Product & Data Engineering

Job Posting Primary Business:

PDE - Consumer Software Engineering

Primary Job Posting Category:

Software Engineer

Employment Type:

Full time

Primary City, State, Region, Postal Code:

Seattle, WA, USA

Alternate City, State, Region, Postal Code:

Date Posted:

2025-05-16