Sr Data Engineer

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology

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. 

Commerce, Data & Identity provides the core product management functions for areas crucial to Disney’s media businesses. These include initiatives and products that power digital commerce, identity, and growth, as well as those that reach uniquely across The Walt Disney Company enterprise, such as messaging and privacy, among others. Additionally, it is responsible for the data engineering, science, and products for Disney Entertainment & ESPN, along with their interconnection with other parts of The Walt Disney Company. 

Job Summary:

We are seeking a passionate Senior Software Engineer to join the Product Performance Team within the Data Organization at Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology. Our team is vital, owning the development of reliable data solutions that measure the product performance of Disney+.

This role involves designing, building, and testing the core algorithms and data models that generate precise and dependable browse, playback attribution, and search data. This data establishes the governed, source-of-truth solutions essential for measuring Disney+ product engagement and driving critical business decisions. We are looking for an individual excited by the challenge of solving complex business questions through the power of data.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Design, implement, and deploy robust data solutions for both batch ingestion and stream processing using Scala and Python with frameworks like Spark, primarily deployed via Databricks and Airflow.

• Establish and enforce rigorous standards for code development, testing, and deployment to guarantee the highest levels of data quality, accuracy, and governance.

• Extend functionality of Product Performance Data offerings by evolving existing data models and developing new data pipelines to introduce novel metrics and dimensions critical for measuring Disney+ engagement.

• Maintain, update, and expand existing source code that powers core datasets, ensuring strict quality standards and high data reliability.

• Drive platform and business success through active collaboration with Product Managers, Data Analysts, and cross-functional engineering teams to define requirements and deliver new data features.

• Work within a modern data and engineering tech stack, including Airflow, Spark, Databricks, Delta Lake, Snowflake, GitHub Actions, and Jenkins.

• Proactively investigate and resolve complex data pipeline failures and quality issues, performing root cause analysis, and creating comprehensive documentation to ensure data integrity and support operational efficiency.

• Identify and implement technical optimizations to improve performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency of existing data pipelines, while providing technical guidance and mentorship on best practices.

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience developing large data pipelines

• Strong CICD and SDLC fundamentals

• Strong algorithmic problem-solving expertise

• Strong fundamental Scala and Python software engineering skills

• Basic understanding of AWS or other cloud provider resources (S3)

• Strong SQL skills and ability to create queries to analyze complex datasets

• Hands-on production environment experience with distributed engineering systems such as Spark and Kafka

• Hands-on production experience with orchestration systems such as Airflow

• Some scripting language (Bash, PowerShell) experience

• Willingness and ability to learn and pick up new skillsets

• Self-starting problem solver with an eye for detail and excellent analytical and communication skills

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Systems preferred

• Experience with at least one major Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) or cloud database technology (Snowflake, Redshift, Big Query)

• Experience with Jenkins and Github Actions

• Experience in developing APIs with GraphQL

• Deep Understanding of AWS or other cloud providers as well as infrastructure as code

• Familiarity with Data Modeling techniques and Data Warehousing standard methodologies and practices

• Familiar with Scrum and Agile methodologies

Required Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience

The hiring range for this position in New York, NY is $148,700 to $199,400 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.