Description
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.
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.
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.