Principal Software Engineer

Disney
San Francisco, CA, USA2026-04-22Full time

About the job

You will conduct multidisciplinary research and development in video streaming for both live and on-demand use cases. You will have the opportunity to participate in multimedia standardizations such as AOM, MPEG, IETF, and VQEG, and connect with academic research groups and conferences. You will be designing media processing algorithms and software workflows for the purposes of achieving velocity, scale, and efficiency to further optimize our media platform. You will collaborate cross-functionally with teams such as our studios, streaming backend, streaming delivery, client, and product teams to investigate, develop and adopt cutting-edge technologies and specifications into production. You will be part of a team conducting innovative research and advanced development involving advanced computer vision algorithms and applied ML/AI techniques to address the tasks such as media enhancement, understanding, analysis, compression, and enhancing storytelling through innovative media experiences. As a Principal Engineer your technical expertise will influence various codebases ensuring compatibility of practices, driving technical standards contributing to architectural best practices across the organization. You will be leading coordination for large projects and facilitating cross-team collaboration, owning complex and innovative projects that span multiple teams and components, leading documentation, architecture, and stakeholder engagement. All while regularly driving innovation and technical strategy.

Responsibilities

Conduct multidisciplinary research and development in video streaming for both live and on-demand use cases; Participate in multimedia standardizations such as AOM, MPEG, IETF, and VQEG, and connect with academic research groups and conferences; Design media processing algorithms and software workflows for the purposes of achieving velocity, scale, and efficiency to further optimize our media platform; Collaborate cross-functionally with teams such as our studios, streaming backend, streaming delivery, client, and product teams to investigate, develop and adopt cutting-edge technologies and specifications into production; Be part of a team conducting innovative research and advanced development involving advanced computer vision algorithms and applied ML/AI techniques to address the tasks such as media enhancement, understanding, analysis, compression, and enhancing storytelling through innovative media experiences; Lead coordination for large projects and facilitate cross-team collaboration, own complex and innovative projects that span multiple teams and components, lead documentation, architecture, and stakeholder engagement; Regularly drive innovation and technical strategy

Qualifications

Minimum

Minimum of 10 years of related work experience; Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science, or related field; Deep Expertise in video streaming technologies (e.g. codecs, streaming packagers and distribution, playback algorithms, etc); Strong background in applying deep learning techniques to media processing tasks; In-depth understanding and experience with multimedia frameworks; A proven track record of success and demonstrable experience in research and advanced development in video coding, media processing or adjacent fields; A proven track record of IP generation

Preferred

Expertise in video coding standards such as AV1, AV2, AVC, HEVC, VVC; Knowledge and experience in C/C++; Knowledge and experience with Python; Applied knowledge of Media Metadata and Processing; gStreamer Media Framework; Experience deploying and optimizing AI/ML models and frameworks; Experience with building web-apps/dashboards for data visualization; Experience with working with Dockers; Web service development, REST APIs, XML/JSON; Release management, continuous integration, Git/GitHub; High load, highly scalable and distributed applications