Lead Software Engineer - AI Core Engineering

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.

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:

We’re hiring a Lead Software Engineer to drive the design, development, and scaling of AI Core Capabilities that accelerate AI adoption across Ad Technology. You will guide the creation of shared agents, registries, initializers, and web-based solutions, ensuring that AI integration is consistent, safe, and efficient across the organization.

This role blends hands-on engineering with technical leadership: you’ll set patterns, mentor senior engineers, and collaborate with infra, data, and product teams to ensure AI is delivered using shared AI capabilities, governance, observability, and enterprise-grade quality.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

Architecture & Technical Leadership

• Define reference designs and best practices for reusable AI agents, services, and webapps.

• Provide technical guidance and code/design reviews for senior engineers.

Reusable Agents & Tooling

• Lead the design and development of agents, SDKs, and accelerators that support multiple teams.

• Deliver APIs and frameworks that simplify integration with AI services and enterprise systems.

• Develop high-quality APIs and SDKs that simplify adoption of AI capabilities by other engineering teams.

Governance, Safety & Observability

• Establish standards for guardrails, evaluation, and observability of AI-driven workflows.

• Partner with security and governance teams to ensure compliance and safe adoption.

Mentorship & Cross-Team Collaboration

• Mentor engineers, share knowledge, and raise the overall technical bar.

• Work with product, infra, and security leaders to accelerate AI adoption across Disney Ad Tech.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field (Master’s preferred), or equivalent experience.

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, with 1+ years in technical leadership roles.

• Strong proficiency in Python and backend frameworks; experience building scalable APIs and SDKs.

• Hands-on with LLM APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude) and orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph).

• Experience integrating with enterprise AI services such as AWS Bedrock or Azure AI Foundry.

• Strong knowledge of AI safety, governance, and evaluation practices.

• Proven ability to mentor engineers and drive cross-team adoption of shared solutions.

• Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to explain complex technical concepts to both engineers and non-technical stakeholders.

• Experience conducting code reviews and enforcing best practices for maintainability, security, and performance.

• Proven ability to mentor and coach engineers, providing feedback, guidance, and technical growth opportunities.

• Experience with system design and architecture discussions, including trade-off analysis.

• Demonstrated ability to collaborate across functions (infra, data, security, product) to align on shared solutions.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building AI enablement frameworks (registries, initializers, reusable components).

• Familiarity with observability and tracing for AI systems (latency, cost, quality).

• Knowledge of AI gateway patterns (routing, throttling, fallback, quotas).

• Prior experience in developer enablement or platform engineering roles with broad organizational impact.

• Experience leading cross-team technical initiatives, ensuring consistency and reuse across large engineering organizations.

• Skilled at writing technical documentation, design RFCs, and standards for broader adoption.

• Track record of influencing engineering culture by raising quality bars, introducing new practices, and driving adoption.

• Prior experience leading incident reviews, RCAs, or architecture reviews at scale.

• Experience presenting technical strategies to leadership and cross-functional stakeholders.

• Demonstrated ability to balance hands-on coding with technical leadership and mentoring.

#disneytech

The hiring range for this position in Los Angeles, CA is between $141,900 – $190,300, San Francisco, CA is between $155,400 - $208,400 and Seattle, WA $148,700 - $199,400. 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.