Principal Software Development Engineer in Test
The Walt Disney Company1 day ago
Santa Monica, CA, USA or New York, NY, USAStaff+
Base Salary
$174k - $245k/yr
Responsibilities
- Define and drive the strategy, roadmap, architecture, metrics, release criteria, and automation objectives for backend quality engineering.
- Architect scalable and resilient test automation for distributed microservices, APIs, and event-driven services.
- Embed quality gates and automated validation into CI/CD pipelines in partnership with backend engineering teams.
- Use AI coding tools and agents to build production code, automated tests, internal tooling, skills, and quality workflows.
- Coach SDETs and engineers, lead technical deep-dives and design reviews, and establish standardized tools and frameworks.
- Lead concurrent backend quality initiatives, test governance, traceability, coverage, reporting, and data-driven quality improvements.
- Facilitate root cause analysis for high-severity incidents and communicate findings to leadership.
- Contribute to front-end, UI, or client-side test automation when priorities or coverage gaps require it.
- Participate in hiring and interviewing and support engineers’ career growth and promotion readiness.
Requirements
- 10+ years of experience in quality engineering, automation, or software development, including recent leadership responsibility in large, complex backend or distributed engineering environments.
- Several years of hands-on experience with large-scale consumer streaming architectures such as Disney+, Hulu, or comparable OTT platforms.
- Expert-level programming skills in Java, Python, and/or Node/JavaScript, with strong computer science fundamentals.
- Expertise architecting and scaling test automation for cloud-native backend systems, including microservices, REST/gRPC APIs, message queues, and SQL/NoSQL data stores.
- Demonstrated experience using AI coding tools and agents to generate and ship production code, automated tests, engineering tooling, skills, and agents.
- Experience setting technical direction beyond a single team, building consensus, and serving as a force multiplier for engineers.
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
- B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.
- Preferred experience designing custom AI agents, skills, or internal developer tooling such as Claude Code or similar LLM-based coding agents.
- Preferred familiarity with adaptive bitrate streaming, DRM, CDN failover, concurrency and session limits, and device certification.
- Preferred working knowledge of Selenium, Cypress, or Playwright for front-end and UI test automation.
- Preferred experience with Kafka, Amazon SQS, Kinesis, Docker, Kubernetes, Spinnaker, Gherkin, Jira Xray, SonarQube, Grafana, and Datadog.
- Contributions to open-source testing tools or frameworks are preferred.
Benefits
- Full-time employment with medical, financial, and other benefits dependent on the level and position offered.
- Bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided in addition to base pay.
- The listed hiring ranges apply to Santa Monica, California and New York, New York, with the actual offer varying by geographic region, internal equity, knowledge, skills, and experience.
Tech Stack
Apache KafkaCypressDatadogDockerGrafanagRPCJavaJavaScriptKubernetesNode.jsPythonSeleniumSonarQubeSpinnakerSQL
Categories
About The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is a diversified entertainment business that produces films and television, operates theme parks and resorts, and runs streaming services including Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+. It earns revenue from subscriptions and advertising, theatrical distribution, licensing and merchandise, and park admissions and experiences. Founded in 1923 and headquartered in Burbank, California, Disney owns brands such as Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Studios and serves audiences worldwide.