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Sr Software Engineer

Job ID 10129775 Location Seattle, Washington, United States / Santa Monica, California, United States / Glendale, California, United States / San Francisco, California, United States / New York, New York, United States Business Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology Date posted Oct. 02, 2025
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Job Summary:

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.

The Personalization and Recommendations team builds systems that provide distinctly tailored experiences to viewers across our streaming products around the globe. We use Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to create powerful content discovery experiences across web, mobile, and living room devices. Through the development of scalable, intelligent, and responsive systems, our team is at the forefront of positively differentiating our viewer experiences each and every day. We are on a mission to connect viewers with content they love.

The Data and Infrastructure team is central to that mission: we provide the data to our Machine Learning models and downstream client teams that enable the most relevant content to viewer matching possible. Our challenge is to source and provide the highest quality data to feed into our recommendation systems, and build out the infrastructure required to deliver personalized data on every request, every time for our hundreds of millions of subscribers around the world.

As a Senior Software Engineer in this role, you’ll apply your passion for data, along with your previous experience working with large scale, low-latency backend distributed systems and data stores to help our team meet this goal. You’ll collaborate closely with machine learning engineers, data engineers and software engineers, as well as project managers and product managers to create the best experiences possible for our viewers.

If this sounds like you, we’d love to hear from you!

What You’ll Do:

  • Design, build and maintain large-scale, low-latency data stores that power personalized content recommendations at global scale

  • Develop and optimize backend APIs and services that reliably deliver personalization data to downstream clients for our hundreds of millions of streaming subscribers

  • Craft and evolve data production and ingestion pipelines to ensure timely, performant and economical persistence of foundational personalization data

  • Collaborate with machine learning engineers to design and implement elegant solutions used for feature storage, retrieval, and online inference

  • Champion operational excellence by leading observability best practices and participating in an on-call rotation for our tier one critical services

What You’ll Bring:

Basic Qualifications

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science (or related field), or equivalent work experience

  • 5+ years of related experience working with large scale distributed systems and data at scale

  • Strong grasp of computer science fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, design patterns, etc.)

  • Strong programming skills in Java, Python, or comparable object-oriented language

  • Hands-on experience with NoSQL data stores (e.g. DynamoDB, Cassandra, ScyllaDB, or other)

  • Familiarity with Databricks or equivalent large-scale data processing platforms

  • Demonstrated knowledge of caching technologies

  • Demonstrated knowledge of operating within a Public Cloud Provider (e.g. AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud)

  • Demonstrated knowledge of source control systems and CI/CD pipelines

  • Strong communication skills, both written and verbal


Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience designing performant database schemas at scale

  • Proficiency working in Databricks to build data pipelines

  • Experience with distributed data processing frameworks, such as Apache Spark

  • Demonstrated knowledge of messaging technologies (e.g. Kafka, Kinesis, SQS, or other)

  • Familiarity with recommendation systems industry architectures and best practices

  • Hands-on experience using AI to accelerate design and development


The hiring range for this position in Glendale, CA is $138,900 - $186,200, for Santa Monica, CA is $138,900 - $186,200, for Seattle, WA is $145,400 - $195,000, and for New York, NY is $145,400 - $195,000, and for San Francisco, CA is $152,100 - $203,900. 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.

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About Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology:

At Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology, we’re blending imagination and innovation to reimagine the ways people experience and engage with the world’s most beloved stories and products. Our work is wide-ranging and deeply sophisticated. We create amazing experiences, transform the future of media, and build products and platforms that enable the connection between people everywhere and the stories and sports they love.

Disney’s ability to marry world-class technology with one-of-a-kind creativity makes us unique. It is at the heart of our past, present, and future. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers.

About The Walt Disney Company:

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise that includes three core business segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Experiences. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family. Disney’s stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.

This position is with Disney Streaming Technology LLC, which is part of a business we call Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology.

Disney Streaming Technology LLC is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, military or veteran status, medical condition, genetic information or disability, or any other basis prohibited by federal, state or local law. Disney champions a business environment where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best stories and be relevant in a constantly evolving world.

DISABILITY ACCOMMODATION FOR EMPLOYMENT APPLICATIONS

The Walt Disney Company and its Affiliated Companies are Equal Employment Opportunity employers and welcome all job seekers including individuals with disabilities and veterans with disabilities. If you have a disability and believe you need a reasonable accommodation in order to search for a job opening or apply for a position, visit the Disney candidate disability accommodations FAQs. We will only respond to those requests that are related to the accessibility of the online application system due to a disability.

Having technical issues? View the FAQs for help.

Hiring Process

  • Where Does Your Story Begin?

    Explore Disney Careers and the Life at Disney blog to learn about all the amazing opportunities waiting to be discovered at The Walt Disney Company.

  • Be Part of the Story

    There are many different brands and businesses to explore. Once you've found the opportunity that is right for you, take the next step by completing your application.

  • The Next Chapter

    Once you've applied, you will receive an email allowing you to access your candidate dashboard. Create your login and make sure to check your dashboard often to see your application progress.

Explore this Location Seattle, WA

With a thriving food-and-drink scene, eclectic neighborhoods and a stunning coastal setting, Seattle is a dynamic urban enclave nestled in the Pacific Northwest. The city is bounded by Lake Washington in the east and Puget Sound to the west, an ideal location for water recreation and sight-seeing cruises.

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