Principal Software Development Engineer in Test

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.

 
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. 

The Product Engineering team is a unified organization responsible for the engineering of Disney Entertainment & ESPN digital and streaming products and platforms — including product engineering, media engineering, quality engineering, and the engineering behind personalization, commerce, lifecycle, and identity — across streaming platforms including Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+.

The Quality Engineering team is seeking a Principal Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) to serve as the technical authority for backend services quality across our digital and streaming products. As a Principal engineer, you will set the strategy, architecture, and standards for automated testing of backend microservices and APIs, partnering closely with backend engineering teams to embed quality throughout the development lifecycle. You will be a driving force in modernizing how the team builds software — championing the adoption of AI-assisted engineering tools and workflows, and personally using them to build production code, automated tests, internal tooling, skills, and agents that accelerate backend quality engineering at scale. You bring a force-multiplier mindset: amplifying the impact of engineers across the organization through design reviews, mentorship, and technical strategy — kickstarting new initiatives, frameworks, or practices yourself, then handing them off to other engineers to own and scale so you can move to the next highest-impact problem. This role also expects the versatility to step into front-end or client-side test automation when priorities require it, though backend services remain the primary and dominant focus.

Ideal candidates are proactive, technically deep, and passionate about raising the bar for quality engineering across a large, complex backend ecosystem, and bring real hands-on experience operating within a large-scale consumer streaming architecture such as Disney+, Hulu, or a comparable OTT platform.

On a daily basis you should bring:

• A track record of driving clarity and simplicity in backend test architecture despite significant ambiguity and complexity.
• A force-multiplier mindset — amplifying the impact of teams across the organization through design reviews, mentorship, and technical strategy.
• Deep ownership of the quality and reliability of the backend services and APIs your organization delivers.
• A pragmatic approach to balancing trade-offs between test coverage, delivery velocity, and architectural complexity.
• A passion for using AI to build — not just to prompt — and for keeping the team's quality practices ahead of industry trends.

Responsibilities:

• Define and drive the vision, strategy, and roadmap for backend test automation and quality engineering across services and APIs; own end-to-end quality strategy for large-scale, business-critical backend projects, including test metrics, release criteria, and automation objectives.
• Lead the architecture of scalable, resilient test automation solutions for distributed backend systems (microservices, APIs, event-driven services); make high-impact decisions on frameworks, tooling, and integrations; partner with backend engineering to embed quality gates and automated validation throughout CI/CD pipelines.
• Go beyond prompting: actively use AI coding tools and agents to build production code, automated tests, internal skills, and quality tooling, and champion the adoption of AI-assisted engineering tools and workflows across the team.
• Serve as a coaching resource to SDETs and engineers org-wide; lead technical deep-dives and knowledge-sharing; build consensus on standardization of backend test tools and frameworks.
• Act as a force multiplier: lead design reviews, stand up new tools and practices, then transition ownership to other engineers so you can move to the next highest-leverage problem; handle escalations and mitigate complexity risk.
• Facilitate root cause analysis on high-severity incidents and communicate findings to leadership.
• Lead delivery of multiple concurrent backend quality initiatives in Agile environments; ensure rigorous governance over test traceability, coverage, and reporting.

Additional Expectations:

• Apply the same rigor to front-end/UI or client-side test automation when cross-functional priorities or coverage gaps require it.
• Define and track advanced quality metrics (escape rates, flakiness, reliability), implementing data-driven improvements.
• Participate in hiring and interviewing, and support the career growth and promotion readiness of other engineers.

Minimum Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in quality engineering, automation, or software development, with recent leadership responsibility in large, complex backend/distributed engineering environments.
• Several years of hands-on experience working within a large-scale consumer streaming architecture (e.g., Disney+, Hulu, or a comparable OTT platform), with working knowledge of the backend services unique to that domain.
• Expert-level programming skills in Java, Python, and/or Node/JavaScript, with strong computer science fundamentals and proven expertise architecting and scaling test automation for distributed, cloud-native backend systems (microservices, REST/gRPC APIs, message queues, SQL/NoSQL data stores).
• Demonstrated experience using AI coding tools and agents to build production code, automated tests, and engineering tooling — not just to assist with prompting, but to meaningfully generate and ship working code, skills, and agents.
• Proven track record setting technical direction beyond a single team, driving consensus on backend architecture, and acting as a force multiplier for other engineers.
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills; B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing or building custom AI agents, skills, or internal developer tooling (e.g., Claude Code or similar LLM-based coding agents) to automate engineering or quality engineering workflows.
• Familiarity with streaming-specific quality concerns (adaptive bitrate streaming, DRM, CDN failover, concurrency/session limits, device certification).
• Working knowledge of front-end/UI test automation (e.g., Selenium, Cypress, Playwright) sufficient to contribute when needed, though this is not the primary focus of the role.
• Experience with Kafka, Amazon SQS, and Kinesis.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, Spinnaker, and continuous integration/delivery systems.
• Experience writing Gherkin syntax to facilitate automated test scenario development.
• Experience with test case management (e.g., Jira Xray), code quality tools (e.g., SonarQube), and observability/data visualization tools (e.g., Grafana, Datadog).
• Contributions to open-source testing tools or frameworks.

The hiring range for this position in Santa Monica, CA is $174,100.00 - $233,500.00 per year and in New York, NY is $182,400.00 - $244,600.00 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.