Lead Software Engineer - Ad Platforms

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Product & Technology

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Product & Technology (DEEP&T), 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 for Disney Entertainment & ESPN Product & Technology

• Building the future of Disney’s media business: DE&E 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.

Job Summary

The Ad Serving Engineering organization within Disney Entertainment and the ESPN organization is fully responsible for building, enhancing and maintaining the high-performance, distributed, microservice-based Digital Advertising Platform. The platform is charged with the qualification, delivery, and tracking of Digital Advertising campaigns (Video on Demand, Live TV, and innovative interactive ads) across all of Disney online properties, including Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+.

In addition, Ad Serving teams collaborate in the development of supporting components, such as anti-ad fatigue systems, impression counting pipelines, and ad experience flows. We also work on integrations with critical services responsible for the entitlements, correct pacing, targeting, selection of ads, and third-party systems.

The Ad Experience team is responsible for all advanced ad formats served on Hulu and Disney+. We strive to deliver a seamless and engaging viewing experience for our audience—while offering advertisers a suite of innovative, industry-leading ad solutions.

As a Lead Software Engineer (non-manager), you will apply your deep technical knowledge and skills to help us deliver scalable, performant, maintainable, loosely coupled, encapsulated, and testable software.

You should bring:

• A willingness and desire to effectively communicate and collaborate across teams and systems.
• Demonstrated project ownership.
• System and API design, and implementation best practices to guide and mentor, for example, micro-service encapsulation and loose coupling.
• A passion for mentoring, learning, and adapting to a very dynamic and fast-paced environment.
• A proven ability to work with product teams to translate requirements into well-defined technical implementations, as well as the ability to define technical and operational metrics to measure system health.
• A keen eye for potential optimizations and enhancements.
• Kindness and pragmatic optimism.
• A deep understanding of Java and the Software Development Lifecycle.

Responsibilities:

• Holistic understanding of the team’s domain and serving as a point of contact for stakeholders.
• Leading by example, supporting their peers, and striving to improve code and design towards more scalable, clean, and decoupled implementations.
• Facilitate discussions and drive resolution, making sure outcomes are clear and well-communicated.
• Designing, implementing, documenting and testing solutions to various engineering problems in a high-throughput, low-latency microservices environment.
• Understanding and use of automated tools (AI) while adhering to company policy.
• Reading and understanding product user stories, translating them into actionable tasks, and leading the team through their execution.
• Enhancing systems’ observability with proper metrics, monitors, and alerts.
• Available for On-Call rotations based on the team’s escalation policy and support schedule.

Basic Qualifications:

• BS or MS in Computer Science / Engineering or relevant work experience.
• 7+ years of software engineering experience.
• Advanced proficiency with Java, including but not limited to understanding memory management, multi-threading, profiling, thread pools, connection pools, and HTTP protocols.
• Demonstrable analytical / problem-solving skills.
• Great communication, collaboration skills, and a strong teamwork ethic with both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience with:
• SpringBoot and related Spring projects
• Non-relational database technologies like DynamoDB
• Caching datastores such as Redis, ValKey, or MemCache
• Data Streaming Mechanisms such as Apache Kafka and/or Kinesis
• Cloud platforms such as AWS
• Modern DevOps tools such as Terraform, Docker, and Kubernetes
• Microservice architecture

Preferred Qualifications:

• Domain knowledge in the Ad Tech industry.

Additional Information:

• Engineers are expected to be in the office four days a week.
• The specific location depends on the team’s location and the hiring manager’s input.

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in Los Angeles, CA is $152,000 - $204,100 per year, in Seattle, WA is $159,500-$213,900, and in San Francisco, CA is $166,800-$223,600. 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.