Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology
On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we’re reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world’s most beloved stories while also transforming Disney’s media business for the future. Whether that’s evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

A few reasons why we think you’d love working here:

• Building the future of Disney’s media: DE&E Technologists are designing and building the infrastructure that will power our media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.

• Reach & Scale: The products and platforms this group builds and operates delight millions of consumers every minute of every day – from Disney+ and Hulu, to ABC News and Entertainment, to ESPN and ESPN+, and much more.

• Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news

Media Engineering
Media Engineering is an innovative organization that is focused on providing the best possible video playback experience, art, and metadata to customers around the world, powered by exceptional technology. This strategic work requires streamlining and repurposing technology across different business and distribution channels – including streaming, linear, and theatrical – so that technology can ebb and flow across the needs of the business.

As an Engineering Manager on the Alternative Content Engineering team, you will be driving the technical architecture, implementation and improvement of services & UIs that manage playback of promotional media, partner pre-rolls & tune in content, and ad placement opportunity curation across Disney’s worldwide and multi-platform streaming footprint. You will be expected to work cross-functionally with product, operations, project management and upstream and downstream engineering teams to align on our designs for new and extensible models and features. 

As a leader on this team, you will need strong communication skills, both within engineering teams and with partners across the business. You will need to design software systems and have a solid understanding of distributed systems design and architecture. You will be able to translate high-level business direction into scalable software solutions and drive complex software projects from inception to delivery. Finally, you need to be passionate about career development and have a strong track record of attracting, hiring, and developing top-tier engineering talent.

Job Responsibilities

• Set strategy and direction for in playback of promotional media, partner pre-rolls & tune in content, and ad placement opportunity curation across Disney’s worldwide and multi-platform streaming footprint.

• Lead design and development of React based alternative content management UIs, and Java based services, collaborating with product and UX engineers.

• Align team to improve live systems with iterations that simplify architecture and the code base.

• Build a world-class software development team through a combination of training, career development, recruiting, and process improvement. Foster an open environment of mutual support and engineering effectiveness. 

• Influence and drive software engineering and architecture best practices and standards within the team and wider organization.

• Collaborate efficiently with Product Managers and other developers to create roadmaps, gather requirements and drive implementation.

• Drive and maintain a culture of quality, innovation, and experimentation.

• Enable data-driven prioritization and decision-making for your team through cross-organizational communication.

• Ultimately responsible for the project success, including the full lifecycle of software development, product and architecture vision and execution against that vision and organization objectives.

Minimum Requirements:

• A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a closely related field.

• 8+ years of software development experience and proficiency in Java, including knowledge of frameworks.

• Experienced with frontend development using React/Javascript.

• 8+ years of experience with relational (SQL based) and non-relational (DynamoDB, Elasticache) technologies, as well as messaging technologies (Kinesis, Kafka, SQS, SNS)

• Experience building distributed systems, solving problems including scalability, reliability, observability, validation, cost efficiency etc.

• Exposure to architectural patterns of a service-oriented web application.

• Strong passion about automation, testing, and code quality.

• Great communication and collaboration skills and a team-focused approach towards software development.

• Demonstrated ability to attract talent, build teams and have fun.

The hiring range for this position in California is $164,492.00 - $220,660.00 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.