Software Engineering Intern, Summer 2026

About the Role & Program:

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.

The individual in this position will join the Data Stores team in an exciting and fast-paced environment where they will help build and maintain highly available database systems operating across multiple cloud and physical data center environments.  These databases support many of the systems powering Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology’s digital media supply chain and consumer facing products.

Join DEEP&T as a Software Engineer Intern, where you will analyze, design, program, debug, and modify software enhancements and new products for use in local, networked, cloud-based, or Internet-related computer programs. This role delivers large or highly complex software programs and systems that are critical to the organization’s technology platforms and commercial applications.

By leveraging in-depth knowledge of current programming languages and technologies, the Software Engineer Intern will write code, complete programming tasks, and perform testing and debugging of applications. The individual will interact with users to define system requirements and necessary modifications, conceive and implement software components, fixes, enhancements, and new systems. Their work directly impacts the organization by driving improvements in product quality, operational efficiency, and technical innovation, influencing future projects and technical direction.

We’re looking for an individual who can apply software engineering principles to database engineering and administration to build processes and automation to help deliver infrastructure faster, safer, more consistently and with the right level of observability required to operate at scale.

What You Will Do:

• Responsible for building, deploying, and ensuring all DEEP&T database infrastructure is available 24/7/365.

• Leverage software development and automation to design, modernize, and deliver database infrastructure.

• Analyze, design, and deploy fault-tolerant, distributed, and highly available database infrastructure.

• Proactively plan and implement infrastructure changes through capacity forecasting, software release cycles, and right sizing.

• Provide database expertise through performance tuning, troubleshooting and administration.

• Develop, enhance, and adhere to engineering and administration standards.

• Develop automation and tooling to increase operational efficiency while ensuring system reliability and security.

• Build infrastructure and systems for scalability, resiliency, availability, and recovery though infrastructure as code and configuration management.

• Provide relevant insights of data store infrastructure through metrics, monitoring, and alerting.

• Maintain thorough and well-written documentation.

Basic Qualifications & Skills:

• Expertise in one or more programming languages such as Python, Java, or Go.

• Experience running, deploying, and maintaining production cloud infrastructure in Amazon Web Services.

• Experience with relational / NoSQL database systems.

• Experience working in Agile software development.

• Experience with source control management tools (Git, GitLab, GitHub).

• General understanding and experience with Linux operating system, network, and containers.

• Experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform, CloudFormation).

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications & Skills:

• Experience operating within a database reliability engineering (DRE) and/or systems reliability engineering (SRE) role.

• Experience building a proper path to production leveraging multiple lifecycles, testing, integration, and CI/CD pipelines.

• Experience running, deploying, and maintaining production cloud infrastructure in Azure and GCP.

• Experience with configuration management (Ansible, Chef).

Education:

• Junior or Senior year preferred

• Currently enrolled undergraduate student in an accredited college/university, pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Management Information Systems, Information Technology or related field.

Eligibility Requirements & Program Information:

Candidates for this opportunity MUST meet all of the below requirements:

• Be enrolled in an accredited college/university pursuing a degree taking at least one class in the semester/quarter (spring/fall) prior to participation in the internship program AND returning to school the semester/quarter following the internship OR currently participating in a Disney College Program or Disney Internship.

• Current Disney Interns, College, International, or Culinary Program Participants:  You may only work for ONE consecutive year (12 months) in any combination of an internship and/or program.  

• Be at least 18 years of age

• Possess unrestricted work authorization

Additional Information: 

• Fully available from M-F, 40 hours each week for the entire program duration: May/June - August/September 2026 (12 weeks)

• Able to provide own housing for the duration internship program

• Able to provide/have reliable transportation to/from work

The pay rate for this role in Bristol, CT is $42.00 per hour. Select benefits may be provided as part of the compensation package, such as medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered. To learn more about our benefits visit: https://jobs.disneycareers.com/benefits.