Software Engineer II - ABC News Mobile and Living Room Device

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology
On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we’re reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world’s most beloved stories while also transforming Disney’s media business for the future. Whether that’s evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

A few reasons why we think you’d love working for Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology:

• Building the future of Disney’s media business: DE&E Technologists are designing and building the infrastructure that will power Disney’s media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.

• Reach & Scale: The products and platforms this group builds and operates delight millions of consumers every minute of every day – from Disney+ and Hulu, to ABC News and Entertainment, to ESPN and ESPN+, and much more.

• Innovation: We develop and execute groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news.

As part of the ABC News Mobile and Living Room Devices team, you will help us push the boundaries of what is possible on some of the most interesting 10-foot devices in the marketplace! You’ll be part of the team that builds our ABC News Direct-to-Consumer client app for streaming ABC News content from one of the most popular streaming devices on the market.

Job Summary:
 We’re seeking a Software Engineer II for the ABC News Mobile and Living Room Device team, where you’ll be part of the team that builds our ABC News Direct-to-Consumer client app on Roku streaming devices and smart TVs. We’re looking for an engineer who, ideally, has experience in BrightScript, SceneGraph, and is ready to write client apps that provide the best experiences for our viewers.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Be a critical member of a team of engineers responsible for building our client app experiences in BrightScript, using the Roku SceneGraph SDK

• Contribute to the development of new application features from on-boarding to browse UI/UX experiences, analytics, video playback UI/UX and much more. If you see it on screen, you’ll likely have a chance to work on it in code

• Have the opportunity to contribute to the development of tools and systems outside of the Roku apps, such as JavaScript- & React-based web tools, gulp build scripts, AWS configurations, and Node.js services

• Work with Roku to vet new hardware, firmware and certification requirements from a client application perspective

• Collaborate closely with our client SDK engineering, design engineering, services engineering teams and product owners to help understand and communicate requirements and device limitations

• Collaborate closely with backend and mobile engineers to ensure parity across implementations and platforms          

Basic Qualifications:

• 3+ years of development experience with a client-side development stack, ideally with some BrightScript experience

• Experience with MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) architecture

• Under the guidance of more senior engineers, candidates will be expected to be proficient in the use of reusable utilities and UI components, and generalized logic that can be consumed by multiple applications

• Preferred Qualifications at a Journey-level

• Experience creating beautiful, rich, performant user interfaces, including implementing pixel-perfect designs and animations

• Experience working on user interface-level code and knowledge of common patterns, architectures, and approaches to present a data-driven UX to viewers

• Familiarity with development and troubleshooting on set-top boxes or Smart TVs

• Experience working on a range of devices with varying performance and capabilities

• Experience with configuration-driven development 

• Experience with performance optimization and feature degradation techniques

• Experience creating and extending templated controls, and writing custom control

• Experience with asynchronous and concurrent code

• Experience with unit testing and related patterns

• Experience with JavaScript client- and server-side development

• Experience with DevOps, gulp scripts, Jenkins and AWS

Required Education:

• Bachelor’s degree or better in Computer Science or a related technical field or equivalent job experience.