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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms, and solve complex and distinctive technical problems.

Content Platforms & Operations is responsible for the development and ongoing advancement of the technical and operational functions driving the worldwide distribution and monetization of Disney’s linear networks and theatrical content. This includes Disney’s media supply chain and storage, network and theatrical distribution operations, media localization, network transmission and origination, and more. The global team also plays a critical role as the primary collaboration point for Product & Technology with Disney’s EMEA, APAC, and LATAM regional business teams.

The Music Supply Chain Team manages products and oversees workflows that enable users to handle both publishing and recorded music business. This includes acquisition, distribution, administration, and monetization processes, leveraging analytics to drive data-informed decisions.

As a Lead Software Engineer, you will architect and deliver resilient, scalable systems across our music supply chain applications. This role blends hands-on technical leadership with strategic influence—transforming business requirements into innovative solutions that support music supply chain platform and data integrations.

This position might be right for you if:

• You’re a curious, efficient, and hands-on engineer who enjoys shaping the direction of development and collaborating with some of the brightest minds in the organization.
• You thrive in an agile, collaborative environment where teamwork, continuous improvement, and innovation are valued.

In this role, you’ll work within the Music sales, finance, accounting, and royalties’ domains, focusing on data streams and integrations between our music metadata repertoire system and various upstream and downstream applications. You’ll collaborate closely with multiple internal and external teams to design, implement, and maintain robust data integration capabilities that ensure accuracy, scalability, and efficiency across the music supply chain.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Technical Expertise: Possesses comprehensive knowledge of technologies and leads architectural design and implementation of large projects. Fixes critical bugs and drives technical excellence across teams. Creates and reviews complex solutions and ensures alignment with organizational standards.
• Influence and Leadership: Mentors senior engineers and facilitates collaboration across teams. Influences and drives cross functional team collaboration with teams like PM, QA, Design. Mediates disagreements and drives alignment among stakeholders. Builds relationships within engineering and with cross functional partners and encourages knowledge sharing. Leadership is both technical and interpersonal, shaping team culture and performance.
• Ownership & Scope: Owns and leads development projects with multiple components and teams. Sets architectural direction and ensures scalability and maintainability. Decisions significantly influence project and team outcomes. Scope includes large-scale solutions and strategic planning.
• Impact: Broadly influences product and project success across teams. Contributions are measured by achievement of customer and operational objectives and OKRs. Work has material impact on business outcomes. Regularly drives innovation and technical strategy

Basic Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in a software engineering role, with a strong track record of designing, developing, and delivering production-grade applications.
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and equivalent work experience.
• Proficiency in C# and .NET technologies, including .NET Core / .NET 6+, ASP.NET Core, Web APIs, and modern backend service development.
• Strong proficiency in Java and JVM-based languages, with extensive experience using Spring Boot, Spring Data, Spring Integration, and related Spring frameworks.
• Comprehensive understanding of the full software development lifecycle, including continuous integration, automated testing (unit, integration, functional), code reviews, and documentation.
• Strong experience with event-driven architectures (EDA) and publish/subscribe messaging systems such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, or AWS SNS/SQS.
• Expertise in relational databases, including SQL, database schema design, stored procedures, query optimization, and data modeling.
• Hands-on experience with API design and integration, including RESTful and event-based interfaces.
• Working knowledge of authentication and authorization protocols, including OAuth 2.0 and related access management patterns.
• Experience with AWS cloud services, such as S3, RDS, VPC, and messaging or streaming services.
• Familiarity with distributed caching solutions and their application in high-performance systems.
• Experience with enterprise and data integration concepts, tools, and best practices.
• Experience monitoring and maintaining applications using modern observability tools and practices.
• Strong grasp of object-oriented and functional programming paradigms and their practical application in complex systems.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across teams and disciplines.
• Strong time management and problem-solving abilities, with a focus on breaking down complex challenges into actionable steps.
• Experience working in Agile environments, contributing to iterative development and continuous improvement.

Preferred Qualifications

• AWS (advanced cloud services and infrastructure management)
• Kafka (real-time data streaming and event processing)
• PostgreSQL (advanced database features and performance tuning)
• Serverless computing (e.g., AWS Lambda or similar event-driven architectures)
• Snowflake (cloud data warehousing and analytics)

The hiring range for this position in Glendale, CA is $152,200 to $204,100 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.