Lead Software Engineer

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we’re reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world’s most beloved stories while also transforming Disney’s media business for the future. Whether that’s evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

A few reasons why we think you’d love working for Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

• Building the future of Disney’s media business: DE&E Technologists are designing and building the infrastructure that will power Disney’s media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.

• Reach & Scale: The products and platforms this group builds and operates delight millions of consumers every minute of every day – from Disney+ and Hulu, to ABC News and Entertainment, to ESPN and ESPN+, and much more.

• Innovation: We develop and execute groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news.

About The Role

The Data Platforms Team, a segment under the Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology (DEET) organization is looking for a Lead Software Engineer to join our Core Media Networks Data Team. Product Performance Data is critical to making product level decisions for the DEET Portfolio whether it’s related to product design, measuring advertising effectiveness, helping users discover new content or building new businesses in emerging markets. This data is deeply valuable and gives us insights into how we can continue improving our service for our users, advertisers and our content partners. Our Core Media Networks Data Engineering team is seeking a highly motivated Lead Data Engineer with a strong technical background who is passionate about designing and building systems to process data at scale to provide business value, create models and features that unlock powerful insights, and work across software and data disciplines to solve difficult unique problems at scale. Our tech stack includes AWS, Databricks, Airflow, Spark, Databricks and languages include Scala and Python.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to the architecture, design and growth of our Data Products and Data pipelines in Scala and Python / Spark while maintaining uptime SLAs.

• Design and develop scalable data warehousing solutions, building ETL pipelines in Big Data cloud environments.

• Implement the Lakehouse architecture, working with key partners to shift towards a Lakehouse-centric data platform.

• Lead a module and be well versed with the Business functionality to support Data questions and analysis for the Business stakeholders.

• Able to understand Business Use Cases/ problems and provide relevant Business & technical solutions. 

• Our tech stack includes AWS, Snowflake, Spark, Databricks, Delta Lake and Airflow and languages include Python, Scala.

• Collaborate with Data Product Managers, Data Architects and Data Engineers to design, implement, and deliver successful data solutions.

• Maintain detailed documentation of your work and changes to support data quality and data governance.

• Ensure high operational efficiency and quality of your solutions to meet SLAs and support commitment to our customers (Data Science, Data Analytics teams)

• Be an active participant and advocate of agile/scrum practice to ensure health and process improvements for your team.

• Be a problem solver; when presented with new challenges, you are expected to research and network to find solutions.

• Seek out answers to business problems and look for opportunities to automate processes & optimize Cost.

• Engage with and understand our customers, forming relationships that allow us to understand and prioritize both innovative new offerings and incremental platform improvements.

Basic Requirements

• At least 7 years of data engineering experience developing large data pipelines.

• Strong hands-on Experience with Cloud technologies like AWS (S3, EMR, EC2) and building data pipelines.

• Strong algorithmic problem-solving expertise

• Strong SQL skills and ability to create queries to extract data, build performant datasets and perform Data Analysis.

• Strong Hands-on experience with distributed systems such as Spark, Pyspark to query and process data.

• Strong fundamental Python programming skills.

• Solid experience with data integration toolsets (i.e Airflow) and writing and maintaining Data Pipelines with Databricks.

• Demonstrated competency in data modeling and analysis techniques.

• Strong attention to detail and excellent analytical skills

• Verbal and written communication skills and ability to collaborate with others effectively.

Preferred Qualifications

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

• Experience in Data Modeling techniques and Data Warehousing standard methodologies and practices

• Experience with Software Application development.

• Good data acumen to understand domain /functional knowledge and to be able to articulate analysis of data points in business context for stakeholders.

• Demonstrated excellent interpersonal skills, communication skills including ability to partner with others and build consensus in a cross-functional team toward a desired outcome.

• Experience working with a test first mentality.

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

• 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

Additional Information

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in Santa Monica, California is $152,200 to $204,100 per year, in Bristol, Connecticut is $152,200 to $204,100 per year, in Seattle, Washington is $159,500 to $213,900 per year. in New York City, NY is $159,500 to $213,900 per year, and in San Francisco, California 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.