This is not a remote role. You must be in the area or willing to relocate!
?We Power the Magic!? That?s our motto at Disney Experiences (DX). Our team creates world-class immersive digital experiences for the Company?s premier vacation brands including Disney?s Parks & Resorts worldwide, Disney Cruise Line, Disney Vacation Club, Storyliving by Disney, Adventures by Disney, and National Geographic Expeditions.
This role sits in the Disney Signature Experience organization within Technology & Digital for Disney Experiences. It supports high-visibility, guest-facing digital platforms and works closely with Storyliving by Disney, Adventures by Disney and National Geographic Expeditions (A&E) businesses.
Role Summary
The Lead Software Engineer will be responsible for leading the development and implementation of custom and commercial software projects to power both cast and guest experiences. They will champion the use of AI-assisted development tools and process automation across the software development lifecycle (SDLC), driving measurable improvements in delivery speed, code quality, and operational efficiency.
This role intentionally blends active software development with technical leadership. You will spend meaningful time designing, building, reviewing, and improving code while also setting technical direction, mentoring engineers, and guiding platform strategy. The role emphasizes modern front-end engineering (UI architecture, performance, accessibility, component-driven development) while maintaining full-stack responsibility with back-end systems.
You will partner closely with Product, UX, Content, and Business stakeholders to ensure the web platform and front-end ecosystem scale reliably to support best-in-class, high-traffic, revenue-generating digital experiences.
What You?ll Do
Experience Platform & Front-End Engineering Leadership (Primary Focus)
- Own the technical strategy, roadmap, and operational health of the Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) platform and the guest-facing front-end ecosystem built on it
- Set front-end architecture direction for guest-facing web experiences (rendering strategy, component architecture, data/state patterns) and ensure consistency across products
- Lead platform upgrades, security posture, performance optimization, reliability, and scalability initiatives across both the platform and UI layer
- Establish and evolve engineering standards and best practices for front-end development (patterns, guardrails, quality gates, CI/CD expectations)
- Build and govern reusable capabilities: components/templates/workflows/content models and shared UI component libraries/design system adoption
- Write, review, and optimize production-quality code using JavaScript and TypeScript; provide hands-on technical leadership for React and Angular implementations
- Champion web fundamentals using measurable standards and tooling: performance, accessibility (WCAG), SEO, and responsive design
- Partner with Product, UX, Design, and Content teams to translate designs into scalable, maintainable solutions and enable AI-assisted content workflows (e.g., tagging, summarization, optimization) with brand governance and quality controls
- Introduce AI-enhanced experience capabilities where valuable (e.g., intelligent search, recommendations, conversational interfaces, personalization) with appropriate quality and risk controls
Services & Integrations (Full-Stack Leadership)
- Design, implement, and review APIs, microservices, and backend integrations supporting business and guest experiences
- Define integration strategies with internal systems and third-party services, ensuring secure and reliable service contracts
- Contribute hands-on across the stack as needed to unblock teams, accelerate delivery, and resolve complex technical challenges
- Collaborate with architects on cloud-native and AI solution patterns, ensuring operability and maintainability
- Ensure end-to-end alignment between front-end, services, and infrastructure (performance, reliability, observability readiness)
Engineering Excellence & Delivery
- Drive adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices (agentic IDEs, code assistants, AI pair programming) to improve throughput and quality, with clear team guardrails and measurable outcomes
- Set standards for ?trust-but-verify? usage of AI-generated code: validation, security review, refactoring expectations, and maintainability requirements (including preventing over-reliance on automation)
- Expand SDLC automation using AI where it improves outcomes (test generation, documentation generation, code review acceleration, pipeline improvements), while preserving engineering rigor
- Actively participate in development while leading code reviews to ensure quality, security, and maintainability
- Identify, prioritize, and remediate technical debt through hands-on contribution and backlog planning
- Translate business requirements into clear technical designs, stories, and implementation plans
- Guide estimation, planning, and delivery of complex initiatives
- Ensure CI/CD, monitoring, logging, and observability are built into all solutions
- Review and approve solution designs and technical documentation
- Ensure you remain up to date with emerging technologies so you can make informed recommendations
Team Leadership & Mentorship
- Mentor and coach engineers through code reviews, pairing, and design discussions
- Provide technical leadership to both onshore and offshore development teams
- Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and high-performing engineering culture
- Promote effective use of AI-assisted developer tools to improve code quality, velocity, and documentation
- Lead by example through strong engineering practices, ownership, and accountability
Required Qualifications
- 7+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Demonstrated ability to lead technical decision-making, influence architecture across teams, and align engineering solutions with business outcomes
- An advocate for a diverse and inclusive culture that encourages innovation and ensures every team member feels a sense of belonging
- Must have demonstrated success using AI coding assistants (agentic IDEs / AI pair programming) to improve delivery speed and quality
- Must have experience implementing AI-enabled automation across SDLC (testing, code review, documentation, CI/CD) with measurable outcomes
- Strong ?trust-but-verify? discipline: validate, secure, refactor, and govern AI-generated output to meet maintainability standards
- Ability to establish team guardrails and educate others on responsible AI usage (risks, over-reliance, licensing/security considerations)
- Strong expertise in modern front-end development using JavaScript and TypeScript
- Must have hands-on experience with Node.js, React and Angular in large-scale applications
- Must have solid full-stack experience with Java, Spring, Spring Boot, RESTful APIs, and microservices
- Experience designing and operating CI/CD pipelines
- Experience with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Splunk, AppDynamics, etc.)
- Strong understanding of object-oriented design and software architecture principles
- Experience working in agile development environments
Preferred Qualifications
- 10+ years of experience building and supporting enterprise-scale, customer-facing platforms
- Experience with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), including AEM as a Cloud Service
- Experience with headless or hybrid AEM architectures
- Experience using AI assisted development tools in large engineering teams
- Understanding of responsible AI principles in enterprise or consumer facing environments
- Experience with cloud-based technologies like AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure
- Experience with Confluence and Jira to document requirements, user stories and technical designs.
Required Education
- Bachelor?s degree (or foreign equivalent) in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
Preferred Education
- Bachelor?s or Master?s degree in Computer Science or a related discipline
#DISNEYTECH
The hiring range for this position in Orlando is $148,300.00 - $180,000.00 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.
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