About the Role
The Ads Data team is transforming the advertising landscape across TV and streaming video through data and AI. We design and build innovative solutions to measure and optimize the advertising lifecycle. We are hiring a Senior Data Engineer to design, build, and scale data foundations that power AI adoption across Ad Technology. You will own data flow into AI-ready stores, partner with AI Core Engineering, and develop resilient pipelines for high-profile AI applications.
Responsibilities
- Build and maintain high-performance streaming and batch data pipelines for AI applications, ensuring reliable low-latency ingestion and high-throughput processing.
- Implement and extend embedding generation workflows, vector store integrations, and retrieval pipelines supporting semantic search, RAG systems, and AI assistants.
- Develop and optimize scalable storage and retrieval patterns, focusing on cost-efficient architecture and smooth production performance.
- Implement AI-optimized data models and storage patterns aligning with enterprise architecture.
- Integrate pipelines with shared AI platform services, ensuring clean, versioned, and reliable data delivery.
- Build reusable ingestion, transformation, and data processing components.
- Embed end-to-end observability into data systems, including metrics, structured logging, automated alerts, drift detection, and failure analysis.
- Implement robust data quality validation, schema evolution safeguards, and governance/compliance controls.
- Ensure deployed pipelines meet high standards for reliability, recoverability, auditability, and long-term maintenance.
- Drive execution by owning the full development lifecycle: prototyping, implementation, testing, deployment, optimization, and documentation.
- Collaborate closely with infrastructure, ML engineering, product, and governance teams.
- Lead by example through strong execution, high-quality code, and proactive problem solving.
- Influence design direction through technical proposals and hands-on delivery.
Requirements
- 5+ years of data engineering experience, with at least 1 year in a lead or senior technical role.
- Experience building and scaling streaming data pipelines in large-scale, distributed environments.
- Strong skills in Python, Java and SQL with expert level skill in either Python or Java.
- Proven experience building streaming data pipelines (e.g., Kafka, Flink, Spark, Kinesis).
- Experience with embedding pipelines and vector stores (e.g., Pinecone, Weaviate, FAISS, pgvector).
- Strong knowledge of data modeling, storage optimization, and retrieval patterns for large-scale systems.
- Hands-on experience with workflow orchestration tools (Airflow, Dagster, etc.).
- Strong collaboration and communication skills, able to partner across AI engineering, infra, and product teams.
- Familiarity with testing, monitoring, and automation for data pipelines.
- Experience integrating AI-ready data stores with LLM orchestration frameworks (LangChain, LangGraph, etc.).
- Knowledge of observability and monitoring stacks (Datadog, Prometheus, or equivalent).
- Background in governance and compliance practices for enterprise data platforms.
- Experience building data frameworks, registries, or accelerators adopted by multiple teams.
- Experience ensuring data security, lineage, and auditability in enterprise data environments.
- Skilled at writing design documentation, driving system architecture reviews, and influencing data engineering culture.
Skills
- Python
- Java
- SQL
- Kafka
- Flink
- Spark
- Kinesis
- Pinecone
- Weaviate
- FAISS
- pgvector
- Airflow
- Dagster
- LangChain
- LangGraph
- Databricks
- Datadog
- Prometheus
- AWS big data tech stack (S3, Glue, MWAA)
Location
- Glendale, CA, USA
- USA - CA - Market St
Work Type
- Full time
Experience Level
- Senior
Education Level
- Bachelor or above in computer science or a related quantitative field; or equivalent practical experience demonstrating advanced technical expertise
Salary/Compensations
- Glendale, CA: $138,900 - $186,200 per year
- San Francisco, CA: $152,100 - $203,900 per year
Benefits
- A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided
- Full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered
About the Company
- 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.
- Our Technologists are designing and building the products and platforms that will power our media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.
- Disney’s technology and products serve as a signature doorway for fans' connections with the company’s brands and stories.
- Ad Platforms is responsible for Disney’s industry-leading ad technology and products – driving advertising performance, innovation, and value in Disney’s sports, news, and entertainment content, across all media platforms.
