The Walt Disney Company

Manager, Software Engineering – AI Core Engineering

The Walt Disney Company

full-time

Posted on:

Location Type: Hybrid

Location: Glendale • California, Washington • 🇺🇸 United States

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Salary

💰 $171,600 - $230,100 per year

Job Level

SeniorLead

Tech Stack

JavaPython

About the role

  • Lead, mentor, and grow a team of full stack engineers (backend-heavy) and UI-focused developers
  • Drive career development, performance management, and team culture
  • Own execution of the AI Core roadmap, ensuring timely delivery of reusable agents, services, and developer-facing web apps
  • Remove blockers, balance workloads, and track progress against objectives and key results (OKRs)
  • Partner with product and TPM counterparts on planning and prioritization
  • Partner with infrastructure, data, product, and security teams to integrate AI core capabilities into enterprise and customer-facing systems
  • Represent AI Core Engineering in leadership forums, sharing updates, risks, and adoption progress
  • Guide architecture and design, review team proposals, manage capacity, and mitigate risks and blockers to keep projects on track
  • Ensure best practices for guardrails, governance, observability, and developer enablement
  • Balance priorities across backend services, AI orchestration, and UI/web application delivery

Requirements

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field (Master’s preferred), or equivalent experience
  • 8+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ years in a leadership or management role
  • Expert in at least one foundational programming language, preferably Python or Java, with a track record of building production-grade systems
  • Proven experience managing teams delivering AI/ML-powered systems or developer tooling
  • Hands-on expertise with LLM APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude) and orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph)
  • Experience designing and delivering multi-agent architectures and applying modern AI system design patterns
  • Experience overseeing delivery of UI/web applications alongside backend services
  • Working knowledge of test automation and modern CI/CD practices for AI and backend systems
  • Strong ability to mentor engineers, manage performance, and build team culture
  • Excellent communication and collaboration skills; able to influence across technical and non-technical stakeholders
  • Set standards for code quality, test coverage, and production readiness across AI core components and web applications
Benefits
  • A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package
  • Full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered

Applicant Tracking System Keywords

Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.

Hard skills
PythonJavaAI/ML systemsLLM APIsLangChainLangGraphmulti-agent architecturestest automationCI/CD practicesproduction-grade systems
Soft skills
mentoringperformance managementteam culturecommunicationcollaborationinfluencingleadershipproblem-solvingcapacity managementrisk mitigation
Certifications
Bachelor’s degree in Computer ScienceBachelor’s degree in EngineeringMaster’s degree (preferred)