Lead Product Software Engineer

Job Posting Title:

Lead Product Software Engineer

Req ID:

10152773

Job Description:

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.

Ad Platforms is responsible for Disney’s industry-leading ad technology and products – driving advertising performance, innovation, and value in Disney’s sports, news, and entertainment content, across all media platforms.

Job Summary:

The Ad Serving Engineering organization within Disney Entertainment and the ESPN organization is fully responsible for building, enhancing, and maintaining the high-performance, distributed, microservice-based Digital Advertising Platform. The platform is charged with the qualification, delivery, and tracking of Digital Advertising campaigns (Video on Demand, Live TV, and innovative interactive ads) across all of Disney online properties, including Hulu, Disney+, and ESPN+.

In addition, Ad Serving teams collaborate in the development of supporting components, such as anti-ad fatigue systems, impression counting pipelines, and ad experience flows. We also work on integrations with critical services responsible for the entitlements, correct pacing, targeting, selection of ads, and third-party systems.

Ad Experience Team is responsible for maintaining and building advanced ad types and ad formats/experiences to support Disney and Hulu ad server.

As a Lead Software Engineer (P4) of our team, you will apply your deep technical knowledge and skills to help us deliver scalable, performant, maintainable, loosely coupled, encapsulated, and testable software.

Daily, you should bring:

• A willingness and desire to effectively communicate and collaborate across teams and systems.
• An understanding of the importance of project ownership.
• Knowledge of system design and implementation best practices to guide and mentor.
• A passion for mentoring, learning, and adapting to a very dynamic and fast-paced environment.
• An understanding of micro-service encapsulation and loose coupling, and why they are important.
• An understanding of how to define technical and operational metrics to measure system health and to manage risk.
• Kindness and pragmatic optimism.
• A deep understanding of Java and the Software Development Lifecycle.

Responsibilities:

• Holistic understanding of the team’s domain and serving as a point of contact for stakeholders.
• Leading by example, supporting their peers, and striving to improve code and design towards more scalable, clean, and decoupled implementations.
• Defining, reviewing, and documenting software and system designs in a high-throughput, low-latency microservices environment.
• Enhancing systems’ observability with proper metrics, monitors, and alerts.
• Reading and understanding product user stories, translating them into actionable tasks, and leading the team through their execution.
• Taking ownership of one or more of the team's domain areas.
• Understanding and using automated tools (AI) while adhering to company policy.
• Available for On-Call rotations based on the team’s escalation policy and support schedule.

Basic Qualifications:

• BS or MS in Computer Science / Engineering or relevant work experience.
• 7+ years of software engineering experience.
• Advanced proficiency with Java, including but not limited to understanding memory management, multi-threading, profiling, thread pools, connection pools, and HTTP protocols.
• Demonstrable analytical / problem-solving skills.
• Great communication, collaboration skills, and a strong teamwork ethic with both technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications:

Experience with:

• SpringBoot and related Spring projects.
• Non-relational database technologies like DynamoDB.
• Caching datastores such as Redis, ValKey or MemCache.
• Data Streaming Mechanisms such as Apache Kafka and/or Kinesis.
• Cloud platforms such as AWS.
• Modern DevOps tools such as Terraform, Docker, and Kubernetes.
• Domain knowledge in the Ad Tech industry.
• Microservice architecture.

The hiring range for this position in San Francisco, California is $170,500 to $228,600 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.

Job Posting Segment:

Ad Platforms

Job Posting Primary Business:

AP - Engineering

Primary Job Posting Category:

Product Software Engineering

Employment Type:

Full time

Primary City, State, Region, Postal Code:

San Francisco, CA, USA

Alternate City, State, Region, Postal Code:

Date Posted:

2026-06-03