Sr Software Engineer - Media Platform Alliance

Disney Disney · Media · New York, NY +1

This role focuses on designing and building backend services for Disney's media platform, handling media processing and delivery for streaming services like Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+. The engineer will write and review code, debug production issues, and work on systems supporting video pipelines across multiple platforms. The role requires strong backend engineering experience, proficiency with distributed systems, AWS services, and AI-assisted development tools.

What you'd actually do

  1. Design and build backend services that process and serve media at scale
  2. Write code, review code, debug production issues—the usual engineering loop
  3. Work on systems handling video pipelines across multiple streaming platforms
  4. Collaborate with other teams when our work intersects (it often does)
  5. Help teammates grow—share knowledge, give honest feedback, be someone others can learn from.

Skills

Required

  • 5+ years of backend engineering experience building production systems
  • Strong JVM fundamentals – we recently moved to JDK 25 (Java or Scala, ideally both)
  • Real experience with distributed systems—not just “I read about it”
  • Solid understanding of AWS services (DynamoDB, SNS/SQS, S3), PostgreSQL
  • Proficiency with AI-assisted development tools (Cursor, Claude, Kiro, or similar)—we use them every day and expect engineers to leverage AI to move faster
  • You can debug across service boundaries and actually enjoy figuring out why something broke
  • You communicate clearly—in code, in docs, in conversation

Nice to have

  • Experience with Kafka or similar event streaming platforms
  • Background in media/video processing pipelines
  • Hands-on Kubernetes experience (deploying, scaling, debugging workloads)
  • Familiarity with observability tooling (distributed tracing, metrics, logging)
  • You’ve operated what you’ve built and care about how it runs in production

What the JD emphasized

  • 5+ years of backend engineering experience building production systems
  • Real experience with distributed systems—not just “I read about it”