Lead Software Engineer - AI Infrastructure & Tooling

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 DEEP&T 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 and media engineering, quality assurance, as well engineering behind personalization, commerce, lifecycle, and identity.

Job Summary:

As Lead Software Engineer within DEEP&T, you will touch the lives of Disney fans around the world, working on innovative digital products and platforms from Disney, ESPN, National Geographic, ABC, Marvel, Star Wars and more. You will lead the design and development of scalable software platforms and frameworks that enable automation and AI/ML capabilities across multiple products. This role focuses on building core engineering solutions that power automation and productivity for product teams.

As an experienced software engineering lead with a passion for building innovative solutions, you will lead a small team of talented engineers focused on developing frameworks, tools, and services that empower our SDET teams. Rather than performing testing, this role creates the platforms and automation capabilities that enable SDETs to work more efficiently and deliver high-quality Disney digital applications. Your work will provide the foundation for productivity and reliability across our products by equipping quality engineering teams with the advanced tools they need to succeed.

Responsibilities:

• Develop and maintain internal tools, frameworks, and services that empower SDET teams to improve efficiency and scalability in quality engineering.

• Drive innovation in developer experience by creating reusable libraries, APIs, and automation services integrated into CI/CD workflows.

• Lead the end-to-end development and integration of AI/ML models and automation tools, ensuring they are production-ready, scalable, and maintainable.

• Architect, design, and implement software platforms and frameworks that use AI/ML to enable automation, monitoring, and productivity tools for SDET and product engineering teams.

• Providing strategic input, defining and contributing towards Objectives and Key Results, and partnering within and across the organization to achieve them.

• Leading and mentoring junior developers, providing meaningful insight, code reviews and technical direction across the team.

• Write and review high-quality, maintainable code for frameworks, infrastructure, and proof-of-concept solutions, setting engineering standards for the team.

• Leading communication for projects and overall team status within and across the organization.

• Keeping up with industry trends and new publicly available technologies, coming up with innovative ideas and solutions for complex technical problems

• Serving as an advanced resource for other engineers on the team, training and helping others to contribute meaningful and impactful features and capabilities.

• Collaborate closely with Quality Engineering leadership to understand needs and deliver scalable tools and frameworks that enhance their capabilities

• Stay current with emerging technologies and propose solutions that advance automation and developer experience.

Basic Qualifications:

• 7 years of relevant software development experience, including experience integrating AI/ML into software platforms for automation and developer productivity

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in Computer Science or a closely related field or equivalent years of professional experience.

• Progressive experience in a software development (SDET or SWE) occupation, including developing unit tests and/or automated testing of front end and backend services

• Experience building developer productivity tools or automation frameworks

• Proficient in object-oriented design and expertise with Python, Java and/or Node/JavaScript

• Experience leading teams of software engineers and/or SDETs

• Experience working with high-performing teams using Agile and Lean methodologies

• Experience in modern design patterns and techniques, deriving and gathering quality KPI’s to give insight into product’s health and progress

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience shipping production Python, Flask, Django, React or Node.js applications.

• Experience training custom AI/ML models, validating LLM/LVLM performance and accuracy.

• Experience with developing and deploying applications in cloud platforms (e.g. AWS) and optimizing cost efficiency.

• Experience with Kafka, Amazon SQS, SageMaker, and Kinesis 

• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, Spinnaker, and continuous integration/delivery systems

• Experience with testcase management (e.g. JIRA Xray), code management (e.g. git, SonarQube) and data visualization (e.g. Grafana, Data Dog) tools.

The hiring range for this position in Los Angeles, CA is $155,700.00 to $208,700.00 per year and in Seattle, WA is $163,100 - $218,700. 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.