Principal Software Engineer

Job Posting Title:

Principal Software Engineer

Req ID:

10149987

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.

Our Team and Charter:

This role falls within the Core Media Technology (CMT) team in DEEP&T’s Media Engineering organization. CMT is one of our Research and Advanced Development teams whose focus is in the domain of video and audio processing that drives innovative enhancements into our video processing platform for live and on-demand video streaming delivery. Our work involves optimizing media processing, introducing new media codecs, developing quality and performance assessment frameworks and conducting innovative media R&D towards future platform capabilities for the purposes of achieving velocity, scale, and efficiency through an optimized media platform as well as redefining storytelling through innovative media experiences.

Job Summary:

You will be focused on research and development for future generation image and video coding especially through the application of ML/AI methods.   

You will participate and represent Disney at AOM and connect with academic research groups, conferences and other standard bodies such as MPEG, IETF, and VQEG.

You will be part of a team conducting innovative research and advanced development involving advanced computer vision algorithms and applied ML/AI techniques to address the tasks such as media enhancement, understanding, analysis, compression, and enhancing storytelling through innovative media experiences.

You will have the opportunity to conduct multidisciplinary research and implementation in video technologies, including video processing, encoding and E2E video streaming for both live and on-demand use cases.

You will have the opportunity to design video algorithms and software workflows for the purposes of achieving velocity, scale, and efficiency to further optimize our media platform.

As a domain focused Principal Engineer, you are expected to be a thought leader and technical domain expert both within and beyond the organization. You will be driving architectural innovation and significant IP generation both internally and at the standards level. You will be directly influencing our strategy and representing the organization in technical discussions. Your leadership is visionary and strategic. Your decisions are expected to shape our long-term strategy and product development with contributions critical to initiatives and innovation. You will be regularly working with senior leaders to drive major

technical advancements. Your influence is global and enduring.

Our CMT team is global, with resources from Zurich, Bangalore, throughout the US and in Beijing and coordination and collaboration across these is expected.

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic Qualifications

• Minimum of 10 years of experience in related field
• Deep expertise in video coding standards such as AV1, AV2, AVC, HEVC, VVC
• Strong algorithm background for both traditional block based and emerging neural network based video coding tools
• A strong background in applying deep learning techniques to video processing tasks  such as video enhancement, video understanding, video coding and analysis.
• A proven track record of IP generation
• In-depth understanding and experience with multimedia stack (e.g. video formats, encoders/decoders, video playback/players), multimedia frameworks, and video coding/processing methods.
• A proven track record of success and demonstrable experience in research or advanced development in video coding / media processing or adjacent fields (video quality, computer vision, computer graphics)

Preferred Qualifications

• Knowledge and experience with C/C++ and Python
• Extensive experience in deploying and optimizing AI/ML models and frameworks, including state-of-the-art latent variable generative models and optimization for finite precision operations, is strongly preferred

• Applied knowledge of Media Metadata and Processing
• Applied knowledge of ABR algorithms and transport formats
• Knowledge of gStreamer Media Framework

• Experience with building web-apps/dashboards for data visualization
• Experience with working with Dockers
• Web service development, REST APIs, XML/JSON
• Release management, CD/CI tools, Git/GitHub
• High load, highly scalable and distributed applications

Required Education  

• Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field with 10+ years of directly related industry experience in video codecs

The hiring range for this position in San Francisco, CA is $209,500.00 - $280,900.00 per year and in Morrisville, NC is $182,200.00 - $244,300.00 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.

Job Posting Segment:

PE - Media Engineering

Job Posting Primary Business:

PE - Media Platform - Innovation & Research

Primary Job Posting Category:

Software Engineer

Employment Type:

Full time

Primary City, State, Region, Postal Code:

San Francisco, CA, USA

Alternate City, State, Region, Postal Code:

USA - NC - 3005 Carrington Mill Blvd

Date Posted:

2026-06-15