Job Posting Title:

Principal Software Engineer - Activation

Req ID:

10119748

Job Description:

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Product & 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.

The Product & Data 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.

A few reasons why we think you’d love working for Disney Entertainment & ESPN Product & Technology:

• Building the future of Disney’s media business: Our technologists are designing and building the infrastructure that will power Disney’s 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 execute groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news.

Our Activation team is seeking a highly motivated Principal Software Engineer with a very strong technical background who is passionate about designing and building systems to process data at scale that unlocks capabilities across software and data disciplines. This role involves building and maintaining our Activation Data products which serve as the data sharing platform. The role requires expert knowledge of building scalable, fault-tolerant data products to ensure the reliable delivery of both real-time and batch data. Our tech stack includes AWS, Databricks, Snowflake, Airflow, Spark, and languages include Scala, Python, SQL, and Java.

Responsibilities:

• Be a part of a team of big data and backend engineers to deliver high value projects

• Lead and participate in organization-wide large-scale programs representing the team and our stakeholders

• Lead development of components of large-scale data platform for real-time and batch processing, and own features of big data applications to fit evolving business needs

• Lead development of next generation service platform on cloud-based big data infrastructure for batch and streaming data applications, and continuously improve performance, scalability and availability

• Balance architectural and design considerations such as performance, scalability, reusability and flexibility issues

• Advocate the best engineering practices, including the use of design patterns, CI/CD, code review and automated test

• Recruit, mentor and guide the professional and technical development of team members

• Collaborate with program managers, product managers, SDET, and researchers in an open and innovative environment

Basic Qualifications:

• 10+ years of related software development experience, having worked with medium to large size development teams

• 10+ years of direct experience with Python, Scala, and/or Java

• 5+ years experience with Spark

• Validated experience with Snowflake & Databricks

• Strong experience with complex SQL development related to extract, transform, and load processes

• 5 years experience with Terraform, CDK, or equivalent

• Expertise in Docker and/or containerization technologies

• Experience with Airflow or equivalent schedulers

• Understanding of networking fundamentals, including cloud environments (AWS, etc.)

• Experience with one major MPP database, such as Delta, Redshift, or Big Query

• Experience with testing tools, such as pytest, junit, or equivalent

• Strong software design principles and specifically functional programming paradigm

• Experience mentoring and leading junior engineers

• Experience collaborating with product managers and program managers across the organization

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience

Preferred Qualifications:

• Masters Degree in a related field, and/or related certification/s

• Experience with alternative datastores such as Timeseries, Graph or NoSQL databases

• Experience with real-time event-driven architectures

• Experience utilizing varieties of integration patterns

• Experience in Microservices architecture and containerized cluster orchestration services e.g. Kubernetes

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in Seattle, WA is between $193,100 - $258,900, New York, NY is between $193,100 - $258,900, Los Angeles, CA is between $184,300 - $247,100 and San Francisco, CA is between $201,900 - $270,700 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:

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology

Job Posting Primary Business:

Ad Platforms

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:

USA - CA - 2450 Broadway, USA - CA - Market St, USA - NY - 7 Hudson Square

Date Posted:

2025-04-29