{"schemaVersion":"jobsearcher.job.v1","id":"2763cc1f228657dfc08ecf59","url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/2763cc1f228657dfc08ecf59","canonicalUrl":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/2763cc1f228657dfc08ecf59","title":"Lead Product Software Engineer - ML Data Systems","description":"Department/Group Overview: ESPN Product & Technology Technology is at the heart of Disney's past, present, and future. Disney Sports News & Entertainment 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.\r\nThe 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.\r\nHere are a few reasons why we think you'd love working here: Building the future of ESPN'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.\r\nProduct Engineering is a unified team responsible for the engineering of Disney Entertainment & ESPN digital and streaming products and platforms. This includes product engineering, media engineering, quality assurance, engineering behind personalization, commerce, lifecycle, and identity.\r\nJob Summary ESPN is building a new real-time short-form video recommendation system that will be the foundation of our next-generation personalization experience. High-quality data is at the core of this effort. We are seeking a Lead Software Engineer with deep expertise in building scalable distributed systems, platform services, and data-intensive applications that power personalized user experiences. In this role, you will work closely with Software Engineering, Machine Learning, Product, and Platform teams to design and deliver the foundational systems, APIs, data platforms, and infrastructure that support real-time personalization and recommendation services at ESPN scale.\r\nResponsibilities and Duties of the Role: Design, build, and operate highly scalable software systems and services that support content discovery, personalization, and recommendation experiences.\r\nDevelop and maintain distributed data processing platforms and service architectures that power both online and offline product workflows.\r\nBuild foundational platform capabilities, including feature serving, model inference integration, experimentation infrastructure, and recommendation delivery services.\r\nDesign reliable APIs and service interfaces that enable personalization capabilities across multiple ESPN products and surfaces.\r\nLead architecture and technical design efforts for systems that must operate with high availability, low latency, and large-scale traffic demands.\r\nPartner with Machine Learning, Data Science, Product, and Platform Engineering teams to translate business objectives into scalable software solutions.\r\nEstablish engineering standards, operational best practices, monitoring, observability, and reliability mechanisms across critical systems.\r\nDrive technical strategy and execution for next-generation personalization platforms and services.\r\nMentor engineers and influence engineering practices across teams through technical leadership, design reviews, and architectural guidance.\r\nRequired Education, Experience/Skills/Training: Basic Qualifications 7+ years of experience building and maintaining production-grade data pipelines and distributed data processing systems\r\nStrong experience with modern data processing frameworks such as Spark, Flink, Beam, Kafka Streams, or equivalent.\r\nExperience designing and implementing real-time streaming data pipelines.\r\nProficiency with SQL and schema design for large-scale analytical datasets.\r\nFamiliarity with cloud data platforms (e.g., AWS) and modern data infrastructure components (e.g., data lakes, data warehouses, feature stores).\r\nExperience supporting ML workflows (model training pipelines, feature engineering, data validation).\r\nStrong knowledge of data quality frameworks and best practices, with hands-on experience using Databricks, Snowflake, and Apache Airflow for data pipeline orchestration and validation.\r\nSolid software engineering skills with experience in Python, Java, Scala, or similar languages.\r\nStrong problem-solving skills and ability to work independently in a fast-paced environment.\r\nPreferred Qualifications - Prior experience building data infrastructure for personalization, recommendation systems, or other ML-powered products.\r\n* Familiarity with ML lifecycle tools (MLflow, TFX, Kubeflow) and MLOps best practices.\r\n* Experience implementing data validation, monitoring, and lineage tools (e.g., dbt tests, Snowflake data quality checks) to ensure high data integrity for ML models.\r\n* Knowledge of real-time ML serving architectures and online feature generation.\r\n* Experience optimizing large-scale data workflows for latency-sensitive applications.\r\nPrior experience operating in 0- 1 product development or startup environments.\r\n* Nice to have experience with tools/technologies such as Databricks, Snowflake, Kafka, AWS SQS, Kubernetes, and related cloud-native data platform components.\r\nRequired Education Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Data Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.\r\nThe hiring range for this position in CT and CA is $155,700 - $208,700, and in NY is $159,500 - $213,900 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.\r\nJ-18808-Ljbffr","company":"Socket","rawCompany":"socket","city":"New York","state":"NY","isRemote":false,"isActive":false,"createdAt":"2026-08-08T01:49:44.268Z","occupations":[{"code":"15-1252.00","title":"Software Developers","slug":"software-developers"},{"code":"15-2051.00","title":"Data Scientists","slug":"data-scientists"},{"code":"15-1299.08","title":"Computer Systems Engineers/Architects","slug":"computer-systems-engineers-architects"}],"industries":[{"code":"513210","title":"Software Publishers","slug":"software-publishers"},{"code":"541511","title":"Custom Computer Programming Services","slug":"custom-computer-programming-services"},{"code":"541512","title":"Computer Systems Design Services","slug":"computer-systems-design-services"}],"jobPosting":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"JobPosting","title":"Lead Product Software Engineer - ML Data Systems","description":"Department/Group Overview: ESPN Product & Technology Technology is at the heart of Disney's past, present, and future. Disney Sports News & Entertainment 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.\r\nThe 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.\r\nHere are a few reasons why we think you'd love working here: Building the future of ESPN'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.\r\nProduct Engineering is a unified team responsible for the engineering of Disney Entertainment & ESPN digital and streaming products and platforms. This includes product engineering, media engineering, quality assurance, engineering behind personalization, commerce, lifecycle, and identity.\r\nJob Summary ESPN is building a new real-time short-form video recommendation system that will be the foundation of our next-generation personalization experience. High-quality data is at the core of this effort. We are seeking a Lead Software Engineer with deep expertise in building scalable distributed systems, platform services, and data-intensive applications that power personalized user experiences. In this role, you will work closely with Software Engineering, Machine Learning, Product, and Platform teams to design and deliver the foundational systems, APIs, data platforms, and infrastructure that support real-time personalization and recommendation services at ESPN scale.\r\nResponsibilities and Duties of the Role: Design, build, and operate highly scalable software systems and services that support content discovery, personalization, and recommendation experiences.\r\nDevelop and maintain distributed data processing platforms and service architectures that power both online and offline product workflows.\r\nBuild foundational platform capabilities, including feature serving, model inference integration, experimentation infrastructure, and recommendation delivery services.\r\nDesign reliable APIs and service interfaces that enable personalization capabilities across multiple ESPN products and surfaces.\r\nLead architecture and technical design efforts for systems that must operate with high availability, low latency, and large-scale traffic demands.\r\nPartner with Machine Learning, Data Science, Product, and Platform Engineering teams to translate business objectives into scalable software solutions.\r\nEstablish engineering standards, operational best practices, monitoring, observability, and reliability mechanisms across critical systems.\r\nDrive technical strategy and execution for next-generation personalization platforms and services.\r\nMentor engineers and influence engineering practices across teams through technical leadership, design reviews, and architectural guidance.\r\nRequired Education, Experience/Skills/Training: Basic Qualifications 7+ years of experience building and maintaining production-grade data pipelines and distributed data processing systems\r\nStrong experience with modern data processing frameworks such as Spark, Flink, Beam, Kafka Streams, or equivalent.\r\nExperience designing and implementing real-time streaming data pipelines.\r\nProficiency with SQL and schema design for large-scale analytical datasets.\r\nFamiliarity with cloud data platforms (e.g., AWS) and modern data infrastructure components (e.g., data lakes, data warehouses, feature stores).\r\nExperience supporting ML workflows (model training pipelines, feature engineering, data validation).\r\nStrong knowledge of data quality frameworks and best practices, with hands-on experience using Databricks, Snowflake, and Apache Airflow for data pipeline orchestration and validation.\r\nSolid software engineering skills with experience in Python, Java, Scala, or similar languages.\r\nStrong problem-solving skills and ability to work independently in a fast-paced environment.\r\nPreferred Qualifications - Prior experience building data infrastructure for personalization, recommendation systems, or other ML-powered products.\r\n* Familiarity with ML lifecycle tools (MLflow, TFX, Kubeflow) and MLOps best practices.\r\n* Experience implementing data validation, monitoring, and lineage tools (e.g., dbt tests, Snowflake data quality checks) to ensure high data integrity for ML models.\r\n* Knowledge of real-time ML serving architectures and online feature generation.\r\n* Experience optimizing large-scale data workflows for latency-sensitive applications.\r\nPrior experience operating in 0- 1 product development or startup environments.\r\n* Nice to have experience with tools/technologies such as Databricks, Snowflake, Kafka, AWS SQS, Kubernetes, and related cloud-native data platform components.\r\nRequired Education Bachelor's or Master's in Computer Science, Data Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.\r\nThe hiring range for this position in CT and CA is $155,700 - $208,700, and in NY is $159,500 - $213,900 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.\r\nJ-18808-Ljbffr","datePosted":"2026-08-08T01:49:44.268Z","dateModified":"2026-08-08T01:49:44.268Z","hiringOrganization":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Socket","sameAs":"https://jobsearcher.com"},"jobLocation":{"@type":"Place","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","addressLocality":"New York","addressRegion":"NY","addressCountry":"US"}},"identifier":{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"JobSearcher","value":"2763cc1f228657dfc08ecf59"},"url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/2763cc1f228657dfc08ecf59"}}