Lead Software Engineer

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.

Disney's Android team is seeking an experienced Software Engineer who is excited to build apps enjoyed by millions around the world. You will be building scalable, elegant solutions for the Android applications on Disney+ and Star+ across a wide array of devices including phones, tablets, and TVs. Our highly collaborative group works in tandem with many cross-functional teams. We value pristine communication skills, both written and verbal, as well as a bias for action. We are incredibly invested in maintaining high code quality standards with unit tests, automated tests, modern libraries, and a Kotlin codebase. We strive to build the best Live and video-on-demand (VOD) applications in the world, and we look forward to hearing more about your skills and how they can help us achieve this lofty goal.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

As a Lead Android Engineer at Disney, you are ready and willing to be responsible for a wide array of technical aspects. You assist with critical components including our release process, remote configuration management, and live production issues. You have and will lead entire projects from start to finish. While familiar with the high-level aspects of our project as a whole, you are also focused on and monitoring the health of the team. You not only seek out leadership opportunities to improve processes, but you do it with finesse and a positive attitude. You are comfortable facilitating career growth amongst team members and are invested in the long-term success of the company.

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic Qualifications

• 7+ years of production experience with Kotlin and the Android SDK
• Proficiency with Reactive Programming and Dependency Injection
• Well-versed in different architectural patterns (MVI/MVVM or equivalent)
• Pristine communication skills who can collaborate well across teams
• You write phenomenal code, tests, and documentation
• Experience resolving production issues ideally on a large scale
• Successfully lead a project from start to finish

Preferred Qualifications

• Comfortable using common Android libraries such as Dagger 2 / Hilt, RxJava2, Groupie
• Familiarity with Android TV / Amazon Fire TV development
• Experience with streaming video, codecs, and DRM
• Knowledgeable about maintaining a large modularized codebase
• Experience using performance evaluation tools such as Android Profiler
• Experience with Kotlin, Java, Android SDK, Dependency Injection, Gradle, Databases, Reactive paradigms, Coroutines, Jetpack Compose.

Required Education

• Bachelor’s degree or better in Computer Science or a related technical field or equivalent job experience.

The hiring range for this position in Glendale is $152,200 to $204,100 per year and in NYC is $159,500 to $213,900 per year and in San Francisco is $166,800 to $223,600 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.