Software Engineer II - Java Backend

Disney Entertainment & 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.

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.

Job Summary:

As a Software Engineer II , you will work on services that sit at the heart of our fan engagement platform, ensuring low-latency, high-reliability data delivery at scale. These systems are used to drive highly personalized and rewarding user experiences across a broad spectrum of Disney products including ESPN, ESPN Direct to Consumer, ESPN Fantasy, Hulu, Disney+, Marvel, ABC News and National Geographic.

You will collaborate closely with product, infrastructure, and platform teams to enhance system performance, build resilient APIs, and enable a seamless fan experience across millions of users. This is a high-impact role for someone who thrives in a fast-paced environment and is passionate about building systems that scale.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Collaborate with other teams to develop estimates, roadmaps, and workflow processes to achieve strategic company objectives

• Execution, design, implementation, and maintenance of technical projects that anticipate the needs of the business for years to come

• Solve unique and complex problems that have a broad impact on the business

• Write efficient, reliable, and testable code 

• Review, analyze, and optimize code for readability, reliability, and performance

• Design and implement automated code and system tests

• Instrument, monitor, and support live operations of systems your team owns

• Troubleshoot and resolve issues, problems, and errors encountered across company platforms

• Manage multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced, deadline-oriented environment

• Work autonomously with minimal technical supervision

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic Qualifications

• 3 years of relevant professional experience

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or equivalent

• Motivated self-starter with the desire to learn and adapt to new technologies

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with both technical and non-technical audiences

• Expert understanding of Java programming language, Spring framework, and Maven dependency management

• Expert understanding of API design and distributed web service architecture

• Experience designing and implementing SQL and NoSQL databases

• Experience designing and implementing event streaming services

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s Degree in Computer Science

• Experience designing and implementing custom application metrics and monitoring dashboards

• Experience with containerized cloud hosting

• Experience leveraging cloud platform services

• Experience with many of the following:

  • Amazon Web Services ecosystem

  • Optimized Cassandra database implementations

  • Optimized Kafka implementations

  • Unit, integration, and load test frameworks

  • Analysis of application performance inside a JVM

  • Experience with React UI framework