Sr Software Engineer

Disney Disney · Media · Seattle, WA +1

Senior Software Engineer role at Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology, focusing on building and advancing the technological backbone for Disney's global media business. The role involves developing high-performance, stable, and scalable software, participating in code reviews, and supporting systems in production. Key responsibilities include designing and delivering backend architectures, building data-intensive applications, and creating RESTful or gRPC services. Familiarity with AWS, CI/CD, Kubernetes, and observability tools is required. The team works on providing the best video playback experience, art, and metadata, and developing automated feedback loops for video delivery quality.

What you'd actually do

  1. Work with a team building high-performance, stable, scalable software
  2. Participate in the code review process by providing feedback on pull requests
  3. Participate in the on-call rotation, supporting systems and services during production incidents

Skills

Required

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent work experience)
  • 5+ years of experience designing and delivering backend architectures in a production environment
  • strong understanding of design patterns and best practices
  • Experienced in building and maintaining data-intensive applications
  • bridging the gap between services and data teams to align architectural design with implementation
  • Experience building RESTful and/or gRPC services
  • Proficient in at least one programming language: Scala, Java, Go, or Python
  • Familiar with AWS, CI/CD pipelines, and Kubernetes
  • Proficient in observability and data tools (Datadog, Splunk, Grafana, Databricks)
  • Self-motivated, independent, and excellent at problem-solving
  • strong verbal and written communication skills
  • Ability to mentor less experienced developers and lead cross-functional initiatives

Nice to have

  • Experience designing and operating large-scale, high-availability distributed systems and JVM-based applications
  • Knowledge of functional programming patterns and their application in data processing
  • Hands-on experience with messaging technologies (e.g., Kinesis, SQS)
  • Experience with stream processing frameworks like Flink or Spark
  • Familiarity with CDN technologies
  • Interest in video streaming and internet networking

What the JD emphasized

  • 5+ years of experience designing and delivering backend architectures in a production environment
  • Experienced in building and maintaining data-intensive applications
  • Proficient in observability and data tools (Datadog, Splunk, Grafana, Databricks) to monitor system health, data pipeline integrity, and algorithmic performance.