Principal Software Development Engineer in Test

The Walt Disney Company • Santa Monica, CA

3d • $174,100 - $244,600

About The Position

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology is seeking a Principal Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) for its Quality Engineering team. The Product Engineering organization builds and operates Disney Entertainment & ESPN digital and streaming products and platforms, including Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+. This role is the technical authority for backend-services quality across those products, setting strategy, architecture, and standards for automated testing of backend microservices and APIs in close partnership with backend engineering teams.

The Principal SDET owns end-to-end quality strategy for large-scale, business-critical backend projects, builds scalable and resilient test automation for distributed systems, and embeds quality gates and validation throughout CI/CD. The role leads adoption of AI-assisted engineering by personally using AI coding tools and agents to build production code, automated tests, internal tooling, skills, and agents. It amplifies organization-wide engineering impact through technical direction, design reviews, coaching, mentorship, and new practices that are transitioned to other engineers to scale. Backend quality is the primary focus, with front-end, UI, or client-side test automation support expected when priorities or coverage gaps require it.

The position also leads concurrent quality initiatives in Agile environments, establishes and tracks quality metrics, ensures test traceability and reporting, supports incident root-cause analysis, and participates in hiring and career development. The hiring range is $174,100–$233,500 per year in Santa Monica, California, and $182,400–$244,600 per year in New York, New York. Bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided, along with medical, financial, and other benefits depending on level and position.

Requirements

• At least 10 years of experience in quality engineering, automation, or software development, with recent leadership responsibility in large, complex backend or distributed engineering environments.
• Several years of hands-on experience within a large-scale consumer streaming architecture, such as Disney+, Hulu, or a comparable OTT platform, and working knowledge of domain-specific backend services.
• Expert-level programming skills in Java, Python, and/or Node/JavaScript, strong computer science fundamentals, and proven expertise architecting and scaling test automation for distributed, cloud-native backend systems.
• Experience with backend system technologies such as microservices, REST/gRPC APIs, message queues, and SQL/NoSQL data stores.
• Demonstrated use of AI coding tools and agents to generate and ship production code, automated tests, and engineering tooling, rather than using them only for prompting assistance.
• Track record of setting technical direction beyond a single team, driving consensus on backend architecture, and amplifying other engineers’ impact.
• Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills.
• B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

• Experience designing or building custom AI agents, skills, or internal developer tooling, such as Claude Code or similar LLM-based coding agents, to automate engineering or quality-engineering workflows.
• Familiarity with streaming-specific quality concerns, including adaptive bitrate streaming, DRM, CDN failover, concurrency or session limits, and device certification.
• Working knowledge of front-end/UI test automation tools such as Selenium, Cypress, or Playwright.
• Experience with Kafka, Amazon SQS, and Kinesis.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, Spinnaker, and continuous integration/delivery systems.
• Experience writing Gherkin syntax for automated test-scenario development.
• Experience with test case management tools such as Jira Xray, code quality tools such as SonarQube, and observability or data-visualization tools such as Grafana and Datadog.
• Contributions to open-source testing tools or frameworks.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the vision, strategy, and roadmap for backend test automation and quality engineering across services and APIs.
• Own end-to-end quality strategy for large-scale, business-critical backend projects, including test metrics, release criteria, and automation objectives.
• Lead architecture of scalable, resilient test automation for distributed backend systems, including microservices, APIs, and event-driven services.
• Make high-impact decisions on test frameworks, tooling, and integrations, and partner with backend engineering to embed quality gates and automated validation throughout CI/CD pipelines.
• Use AI coding tools and agents to build production code, automated tests, internal skills, and quality tooling, and champion AI-assisted engineering workflows across the team.
• Coach SDETs and engineers across the organization, lead technical deep-dives and knowledge-sharing, and build consensus on backend test-tool and framework standards.
• Lead design reviews, establish new tools and practices, transition ownership to other engineers, and address escalations and complexity risks.
• Facilitate root-cause analysis for high-severity incidents and communicate findings to leadership.
• Lead multiple concurrent backend quality initiatives in Agile environments and ensure rigorous test traceability, coverage, governance, and reporting.
• Apply rigorous test automation practices to front-end, UI, or client-side systems when cross-functional priorities or coverage gaps require it.
• Define and track advanced quality metrics, including escape rates, flakiness, and reliability, and implement data-driven improvements.
• Participate in hiring and interviewing and support other engineers’ career growth and promotion readiness.

Benefits

• A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package.
• Medical, financial, and/or other benefits may be provided depending on the level and position offered.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal