Principal Software Engineer

Principal Software Engineer

Join us at Metadata Engineering, a driving force within the Media Engineering organization, where we fuel the magic of Disney Entertainment and ESPN Technology. Our team is dedicated to crafting, refining, and disseminating content metadata across our platforms with unparalleled precision.

Imagine being part of a mission to ensure that every piece of content is not just showcased, but gloriously represented, enhancing the viewer experience across Disney Streaming platforms and beyond. We're not just revolutionizing streaming video; we're reshaping it entirely.

We're on the lookout for an exceptional Principal Software Engineer to elevate our team to new heights. As a key player, you'll spearhead the technical architecture, implementation, and enhancement of services vital to managing descriptive metadata, rights, and availabilities across our extensive catalog, including Disney+, Hulu, and more.

Your passion for iterative improvement will be crucial as we continually refine our software systems, domain stack, and data organization. You'll drive agile and continuous development, ensuring our systems maintain peak performance and reliability. Join us and immerse yourself in cutting-edge technologies such as Django/Python, Springboot/Java, MySQL, Postgres, and harness the power of AWS native resources like Kinesis, DynamoDB, S3, SNS, and SQS, alongside Kafka. Be at the forefront of innovation and shape the future of streaming entertainment with us.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Define technical direction, strategy, and technology adoption for the Content Metadata domain across Disney+, Hulu, and more.
• Lead architectural reviews and oversee Descriptive, Rights, and Availabilities of the Content Catalog.
• Design well-architected solutions, and iterate development following agile best practices.
• Develop data-driven software systems aligned with business needs.
• Drive performance and cost optimization through metrics analysis.
• Advocate for best engineering practices, ensuring code quality and robust testing.
• Collaborate on novel solutions and innovate by challenging existing architectural choices.
• Ensure quality delivery by monitoring progress and directing when necessary.
• Expertise in technologies such as Springboot/Java, Django/Python, AWS services (Kinesis, DynamoDB, S3, SNS, SQS), MySQL, Postgres, and Kafka.

Basic Qualifications:

• Minimum of 10 years related work experience.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent field, with 10 years of progressive software development experience.
• Proficiency in Java, Python, or similar languages.
• Demonstrated ability to implement improvement changes on production systems while concurrently adding new features to meet team initiatives.
• Experience with metadata enrichment techniques leveraging ML/AI models (such as extraction of media embeddings, for example).
• 6 years of expertise in core Computer Science principles, including Object-Oriented programming, data structures, and algorithms (hashing, trees, graphs, search, etc.).
• 6 years of experience with both relational (SQL-based) and non-relational databases (DynamoDB, Elasticache), as well as messaging technologies (Kinesis, Kafka, SQS, SNS).
• Proven track record in data modeling and streamlining data from multiple sources into a normalized format to enhance user experiences.
• Experience with high-performance service or stream computing at large scale.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Knowledge of media rights & window rules.