Director Software Engineering

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology

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.

Product Engineering is a unified team responsible for the engineering of Disney Entertainment & ESPN digital and streaming products and platforms. This includes product engineering, media engineering, quality assurance, engineering behind personalization, commerce, lifecycle, and identity.

Job Summary:

We’re seeking a Director of Product Software Engineering who will lead our mobile foundation and core services teams. The mobile foundation teams are responsible for the foundational components, libraries, and frameworks that power our Disney+ and Hulu mobile applications. The core services teams own the foundational web platform powering Disney+ and Hulu, including remote configuration and feature flagging, edge traffic management (nginx, Akamai), and the CI/CD and developer-experience tooling consumed by the web product team. Across both pillars, this leader is accountable for the platform investments that determine how quickly web and mobile teams can ship safely to millions of consumers. The right person for this role is highly motivated, collaborative, and technical, with the ability to coordinate across teams and empower both themselves and others in striving for and achieving excellence.

Responsibilities:

• Direct and oversee multiple teams through managers: accountable for performance, operations, and outcomes. Ensure growth at every level and cultivate a future bench of leaders.
• Drive vision and strategy for systems/products across mobile foundation and core services. Own org-level OKR(s). Facilitate architectural decisions in collaboration with Principal engineers.
• Own significant cross-functional initiatives end-to-end: driving priorities through organizational dependencies, removing systemic bottlenecks, and ensuring nothing stalls waiting for someone else to act.
• Set technical direction across both mobile foundation (iOS/Android) and core services (edge, config), ensuring shared platform investments such as observability, release safety, and developer tooling are prioritized coherently across stacks.
• Build and maintain relationships across organizations and external partners, influencing business direction and ensuring engineering teams have the resources needed to deliver.
• Shape and operationalize engineering strategy: establishing performance standards, developing organizational policies, and embedding a culture of ownership across teams.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 12+ years of engineering experience building consumer-scale applications, with deep expertise in either native mobile development (Swift, Kotlin, Apple/Android frameworks) or modern web platforms (TypeScript/Node.js, tooling, edge/CDN systems) with demonstrated fluency partnering with leaders in the other. Expertise in both is preferred.
• 4+ years of experience leading engineering managers and building high-performing organizations across multiple teams.
• Experience owning platform services that other engineering teams depend on such as SDKs, component libraries, configuration, CI/CD systems, or developer portals.
• Experience partnering with senior stakeholders across Product, Design, and business leadership to define and drive a roadmap that balances business objectives with long-term engineering health.
• Effective collaboration and communication skills, able to discuss technical topics clearly and engage in productive technical discussions.
• Track record of identifying and removing systemic organizational bottlenecks and championing engineering standards and best practices across multiple teams.
• Demonstrated ability to own and drive alliance-level OKRs, holding teams and stakeholders accountable for outcomes.
• Experience developing and implementing operational policies and engineering performance standards at an organizational scale.
• High emotional intelligence, experience maintaining composure under high-pressure situations and meeting tight deadlines.
• Strong project management skills, seeing projects through from inception to completion.

Required Education:

• Bachelor’s degree or better in Computer Science or a related technical field or equivalent job experience.

#disneytech

The hiring range for this position in Seattle, WA and New York, NY is $239,700 - $321,400 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.