Product Software Engineering Mgr

Job Posting Title:

Product Software Engineering Mgr

Req ID:

10151810

Job Description:

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology

Technology is at the heart of Disney’s past, present, and future. 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. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers. We work with every part of The Walt Disney Company’s media portfolio to advance the technological foundation and consumer media touch points serving millions of people around the world.

Here are a few reasons why we think you’d love working here:

• Building the future of Disney’s media: Our Technologists are designing and building the products and platforms that will power our media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.
• Reach, Scale & Impact: More than ever, Disney’s technology and products serve as a signature doorway for fans' connections with the company’s brands and stories. Disney+. Hulu. ESPN. ABC. ABC News…and many more. These products and brands – and the unmatched stories, storytellers, and events they carry – matter to millions of people globally.
• Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms, and solve complex and distinctive technical problems.

Job Summary:

The Manager of Software Engineering will lead a newly formed offshore ML pod based in India, supporting ESPN’s personalization and recommendation systems. This role will be responsible for managing a team of 3–5 engineers (MLEs, Data Engineers, and Data Scientists), ensuring alignment with U.S.-based business goals, and delivering high quality, production-grade ML infrastructure and models. The ideal candidate will combine strong technical leadership with people management skills and a deep understanding of machine learning workflows.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and manage a cross-functional ML pod focused on personalization initiatives for ESPN.
• Drive execution of scoped projects such as implicit affinity pipelines, batch model refreshes, and content clustering systems.
• Collaborate closely with U.S.-based ML and product teams to ensure alignment on goals, timelines, and deliverables.
• Provide technical mentorship and unblock engineers across ML, data engineering, and MLOps domains.
• Ensure high-quality delivery of batch jobs, model training workflows, and evaluation tooling.
• Establish team rituals, performance tracking, and growth plans for offshore engineers.
• Own onboarding, access provisioning, and infrastructure coordination for the India team.
• Foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement.

Basic Qualifications:

• Proven experience managing distributed teams and delivering production-grade ML systems.
• Strong technical background in ML infrastructure, data pipelines, and model deployment.
• Familiarity with tools such as Spark, Airflow, TensorFlow/PyTorch, and cloud platforms (AWS/GCP).
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills across time zones and cultures.
• Ability to translate business goals into technical execution plans.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in personalization, recommendation systems, or content ranking.
• Prior experience managing offshore teams or pods.
• Familiarity with experimentation platforms and ML evaluation tooling.

Experience with:

• 5+ years of experience in software engineering or machine learning engineering, with 2+ years in a leadership or management role.

Required Education:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience

Job Posting Segment:

Product Engineering

Job Posting Primary Business:

PE - India Product & Technology

Primary Job Posting Category:

Product Software Engineering

Employment Type:

Full time

Primary City, State, Region, Postal Code:

Bangalore, India

Alternate City, State, Region, Postal Code:

Date Posted:

2026-08-13