Lead Software Engineer

Department/Group Overview:

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Technology (DE&E Technology) provides the technological backbone and product development for Disney’s two media business units, while helping to keep the company at the vanguard of innovation – enabling the Company to continuously leverage technology to enhance storytelling and creativity, while delivering scalability, flexibility, and efficiency for its businesses.

Within DE&E Technology, the Ad Platforms team is responsible for creating and scaling innovative global advertising solutions by building mission-critical tools and workflows to support addressable & linear ad sales, traffic, marketing and parts of broadcast operations.  Being part of the DE&E Technology team is a once-in-a-career opportunity to be a part of what’s next.

This role is a part of the Software Engineering team within the DE&E Ad Platforms organization. We strive to be a diverse team, passionate about great technology applied creatively to solve complex business problems.  We are a motivated team that is committed to lifelong learning and improving, both in and out of the office. We strive to be flexible and adaptable to change both in how we execute projects and in the technologies we use to deliver our solutions. We care about the details because every pixel, every line of code, and every user interaction with our products determines whether we are delivering on our commitment to producing the very best products possible.  You’ll be joining a talented team that works interdependently toward aggressive goals to deliver technically sound solutions.  We work to ensure that we share both accountability and credit as a team. We often include our users as part of our team and we work to connect with them on a human level, understanding their world, so we can deliver software that they love to use.

Job Summary:

As a hand’s on Lead Software Engineer, you will use your deep Java, scripting, DevOps, and data persistence skills to write and test code that delivers new features for our application portfolio. You will be a key leader on a motivated team where we’ll be looking for you to collaborate with and drive the team to excellent application architecture, code quality, and work to ensure we are building the right things for our users. We want someone that has grown up through the web software development ranks - possessing solid experience in designing and architecting highly scalable, secure, performant, and usable web applications using Java/Java EE. The ideal candidate would possess deep skills in server side technology (Java, Spring, RESTful Web Services), while having expertise with orchestration and containerization platforms (Docker and Kubernetes), coupled with hands on persistence and data streaming technology experience (MySQL, Oracle, Cassandra, Redis, Kafka) deploying into AWS.The role is nearly equally balanced with leadership responsibilities where you will lead teams, working across the organization, in developing key improvements and product enhancements for new and existing applications. You will work in a hybrid tech lead role where you will exercise hand’s on skill while taking ownership, communicating and collaborating with your team and vendor teams on designing and implementing solutions, and resolving critical production issues.

You will have an advanced view into the people, technologies, and practices of the team, and apply your individual skills to help projects across the finish line. You will support the engineering culture and career growth of your team members, as well as foster a supportive, inclusive, and team environment in which people do their best work. You’ll play a critical part in driving our technology vision forward and ensuring that we execute across multiple initiatives.

We’re looking for a passionate, impactful, technical leader who wants to come here to do their very best work and make their mark, add their chapter to the long and storied history of The Walt Disney Company. Someone who holds themselves and their teammates accountable in a professional, collaborative manner. A collaborative technologist who seeks to bring the best out in themselves and those around them. Someone who can provide a fresh perspective and innovative insight to our initiatives.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead engineering teams in building architectures which are robust, fault-tolerant, and cloud- native
• Possess extensive AWS manage service solution design and implementation experience
• Reason logically and creatively, identifying problems, drawing valid conclusions from the data available, and develop effective solutions while applying creative thinking in the design and development of high performing web applications
• Collaborate with fellow senior and lead engineers to keep the team’s technology radar and architecture principles aligned to the industry and needs of our users
• Lead code reviews and provide leadership and direction to junior engineers
• Deliver multiple projects utilizing an Agile methodology
• Take a high ownership, self-sufficient, hands-on position on the team to lead and drive quality, maintain application stability
• Write complex programs, analyze code changes and suggest improvements
• Check-in valuable, clean code on a daily basis that adds new features and capabilities
• Create reference implementations for the purpose of mentoring and leading more junior staff (when required)
• Help define engineering standards and provide technical mentorship to the team
• Investigate and resolve any production issues from end user (UI) to persistence layer and work to prevent them
• Work with product managers and managers to ensure that all project deliverables are on time and high quality
• Work collaboratively with other service teams

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

YOU MUST…

• Hold a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Information Systems, Engineering, or another technical field
• Have 7+ years of experience in web application development or software engineering in a large enterprise environment using Java, including familiarity with modern frameworks and platforms (e.g., Spring, Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka)
• Be able to demonstrate significant experience working with relational databases, SQL and newer NoSQL data stores as well as event streaming platforms
• Have a solid understanding of AWS technologies
• Have a strong interest in open source technology
• Possess good communication skills and enjoy mentoring and helping others to succeed as a team
• Care about your craft and have opinions about the “right” way to do things with technology

PREFERRED EXPERIENCE/EDUCATION/SKILLS

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering or related technical discipline is highly desirable
• Previous work experience in Accounts Receivable and/or financial applications
• Experience working with vendor teams to deliver high quality results
• Knowledge of performance testing and application profiling (Gatling, JProfiler)
• Strong curiosity about how Disney delivers the Magic and a desire to be a part of it

The hiring range for this position in California is $149,240 - $219,230 per year and in Washington is $156,292 to $209,660 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.