Lead Software Engineer - Ad Serving Engineering

Company: Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Techno
Location: Glendale
Posted on: January 6, 2026

Job Description:

Job Description 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. The Ad Serving Engineering organization within Disney Entertainment and the ESPN organization is fully responsible for building, enhancing and maintaining the high-performance, distributed, microservice-based Digital Advertising Platform. The platform is charged with the qualification, delivery, and tracking of Digital Advertising campaigns (Video on Demand, Live TV, and innovative interactive ads) across all of Disney online properties, including Hulu, Disney, and ESPN. In addition, Ad Serving teams collaborate in the development of supporting components, such as anti-ad fatigue systems, impression counting pipelines, and ad experience flows. We also work on integrations with critical services responsible for the entitlements, correct pacing, targeting, selection of ads, and third-party systems. As part of our backend team, you’ll develop and support ad delivery systems for on-demand and live TV content. Our stack includes Java, Spring, Kubernetes, AWS, and Terraform. You’ll work on services that handle high-throughput ad requests, focusing on performance, reliability, and evolving the platform to support new ad formats. As a Lead Software Engineer, you will apply your deep technical knowledge and skills to help us deliver scalable, performant, maintainable, loosely coupled, encapsulated, and testable software. Daily, you should bring: - A willingness and desire to effectively communicate and collaborate across teams and systems. - Demonstrated project ownership. - System and API design, and implementation best practices to guide and mentor, for example, micro-service encapsulation and loose coupling. - A passion for mentoring, learning, and adapting to a very dynamic and fast-paced environment. - A proven ability to work with product teams to translate requirements into well-defined technical implementations, as well as the ability to define technical and operational metrics to measure system health. - A keen eye for potential optimizations and enhancements. - Kindness and pragmatic optimism. - A deep understanding of Java and the Software Development Lifecycle. Responsibilities: - Holistic understanding of the team’s domain and serving as a point of contact for stakeholders. - Leading by example, supporting their peers, and striving to improve code and design towards more scalable, clean, and decoupled implementations. - Facilitate discussions and drive resolution, making sure outcomes are clear and well-communicated. - Designing, implementing, and testing solutions to various engineering problems in a high-throughput, low-latency microservices environment. - Understanding and use of automated tools (AI) while adhering to company policy. - Reading and understanding product user stories, translating them into actionable tasks, and leading the team through their execution. - Enhancing systems’ observability with proper metrics, monitors, and alerts. - Available for On-Call rotations based on the team’s escalation policy and support schedule. Basic Qualifications: - BS or MS in Computer Science / Engineering or relevant work experience. - 7 years of software engineering experience. - Advanced proficiency with Java, including but not limited to understanding memory management, multi-threading, profiling, thread pools, connection pools, and HTTP protocols. - Demonstrable analytical / problem-solving skills. - Great communication, collaboration skills, and a strong teamwork ethic with both technical and non-technical audiences. - Experience with: - SpringBoot and related Spring projects. - Non-relational database technologies like DynamoDB. - Caching datastores such as Redis, ValKey, or MemCache. - Data Streaming Mechanisms such as Apache Kafka and/or Kinesis. - Cloud platforms such as AWS. - Modern DevOps tools such as Terraform, Docker, and Kubernetes. - Microservice architecture. Preferred Qualifications: - Domain knowledge in the Ad Tech industry. Additional Information: This will be an on-site role (4 days/week) DISNEYTECH The hiring range for this position in Glendale & Santa Monica, CA is between $155,700 to $208,700 per year, and San Francisco, CA is between $170,500 to $228,600.00 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.

Keywords: Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Techno, Glendale , Lead Software Engineer - Ad Serving Engineering, IT / Software / Systems , Glendale, Arizona