Sr Product Software Engineer

Senior Software Engineer

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.

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will be part of a diverse and talented organization focused on building and maintaining complex sports platform services and applications for ESPN. You will be a key contributor on a team creating the world's #1 sports products, working with modern server-side platform frameworks and services such as Spring Boot, MongoDB, and Apache Kafka. You will design, build, and own significant features and services end-to-end, mentor junior engineers, and drive technical quality across the codebase.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• 40% Design and develop platform services and features within a complex distributed system that delivers live sports data to Web, Mobile, and Living Room devices
• 15% Own and operate services in production — monitoring, troubleshooting, and incident response for the systems you build
• 20% Collaborate cross-functionally with other engineering teams to solve complex problems, considering performance, scalability, caching, resiliency, and flexibility for expanding product requirements
• 15% Mentor and elevate junior and mid-level engineers through code reviews, pairing, and technical guidance
• 10% Contribute to technical direction by participating in architectural reviews, proposing improvements, and researching emerging technologies

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

• Basic Qualifications
• 5+ years relevant industry experience
• Strong proficiency in backend platform development technologies and principles
• Strong understanding of software architectural patterns (microservices, event-driven, RESTful APIs)
• Experience with Cloud-based architecture and deployment
• Strong proficiency in Java or other JVM languages; familiarity with Go, Rust, or other system-level languages a plus
• Experience with messaging/streaming platforms such as Apache Kafka
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and task automation (GitLab Pipelines, GitHub Actions, TeamCity)
• Experience with relational and/or NoSQL database technologies (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra)
• Strong communication skills, attention to detail, and ability to work effectively in a collaborative team environment
• Demonstrated ability to own features end-to-end from design through production support
• Preferred Qualifications
• Understanding of AWS services (e.g., CloudWatch, ECS/Fargate, EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS)
• Experience with observability tooling (Datadog, Grafana, Splunk, or similar)
• Experience with GraphQL APIs
• Familiarity with Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, CloudFormation)
• AI and LLM knowledge
• Experience working in sports media, live data systems, or high-throughput real-time platforms
• Required Education
• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or relevant technical field, such as:
• AI and Robotics; Application Development; Applied Computer Science; Computer and Information Science; Computer Engineering; Computer Information Systems; Computer Information Technology; Computer Programming; Computer Science Engineering in Robotics; Computer Systems; Cybersecurity; Electronic/Electrical Engineering; Informatics; Information Security; Information Systems; Information Technology; Machine Learning; Management Information Systems; Network Engineering; Software Design; Software Development; Software Engineering; Web Development; Applied Mathematics

The hiring range for this position in Bristol, CT is $138,900 - $186,200 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.