Sr Software Engineer

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:

1. 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.

2. 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. 

3. Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms, and solve complex and distinctive technical problems.

Content Platforms & Operations

Content Platforms & Operations is responsible for the development and ongoing advancement of the technical and operational functions driving the worldwide distribution and monetization of Disney’s linear networks and theatrical content. This includes Disney’s media supply chain and storage, network and theatrical distribution operations, media localization, network transmission and origination, and more. The global team also plays a critical role as the primary collaboration point for Product & Technology with Disney’s EMEA, APAC, and LATAM regional business teams.

Job Summary:

This role requires a highly dynamic individual to assist with the development of the solution architecture to achieve Content Platform Engineering's strategy.  The right candidate will work with partners from various disciplines (product, security, infrastructure, data/information) to define the most effective solution to business problems, while also leveraging their knowledge of existing systems and services and the capabilities available to enable an efficient and transformational Digital Media Supply Chain. 

In this role you will help define what our future state architecture will be, while also contributing to designing the path from current state to future state.  You should be comfortable operating in complex environments and have experience with highly integrated and mission critical solutions.  The role will require the ability to share and communicate ideas clearly, both orally and in writing, to business sponsors and partners, technical resources, and executives, in clear concise language that is the most effective for each respective group.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Contributing to Solutions Architecture with Product and Engineering partners

• Contribute Reference Architecture for best practices across all domains, by delivering high and low-level technical design documents and specifications, position papers on technology evaluations, and other artifacts that will assist in architecting our Digital Media Supply Chain.

• Develops and communicates system/subsystem architecture

• Provide technical guidance and evangelize best practices while promoting the best use of company and industry standards

• Maintain a deep understanding of our core systems and how they interact with upstream and downstream dependencies

• Partner with stakeholders to refine requirements, and propose solutions to problems that span multiple teams

• Research, learn, and evangelize widespread adoption of new technologies and architecture patterns

• Has participated in incident and problem-solving sessions that require a unique set of skills

• Assist in selecting the right software/tool for the task, as well as the implementation to ensure innovative, reliable, and flexible technology solutions that meet or exceed the CPE standards and SLAs.

• Organizing internal and external resources to solve the technical challenges of our Digital Media Supply Chain

• Any other duties needed to help achieve Business Objectives

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic Qualifications

• Proven expertise with n-tier architecture and delivery of high volume, cached, fault tolerant, multi-threaded scalable systems

• Motivated self-starter with the ability to learn and adapt to new technologies. Can effectively articulate complex ideas and influence others through well-reasoned explanations

• Enjoy working in a team setting with engineers of varying experience

• Strong communication skills and attention to detail

• Understanding of the Media Supply Chain

• Deep understanding of async programming models (events, callbacks, etc)

• Expertise designing APIs with GraphQL and RESTful services

• Experience working with SQL and NoSQL databases

• Experience working with data persistence layers

• Highly knowledgeable in cloud-based technologies such as AWS EC2, SQS, S3, Lambdas, DynamoDB, Elasticsearch, Cloudformation/Terraform, etc.

• Expertise with full lifecycle of application development, including best practices of unit testing, code reviews, documentation, etc.

• Experience with build and deployment technologies such as Jenkins and Docker

• 5+ years relevant industry experience

Required Education  

• BS Computer Science or related technical discipline or equivalent experience

The hiring range for this position in Los Angeles, CA and Bristol, CT is $141,900 - $190,300 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.