Lead Software Engineer - Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)

This role intentionally blends active software development with technical leadership. You will spend meaningful time designing, building, reviewing, and improving code while also setting technical direction, mentoring engineers, and guiding platform strategy. The role emphasizes modern front-end engineering (UI architecture, performance, accessibility, component-driven development) while maintaining full-stack responsibility across AEM, APIs, and back-end systems.

You will partner closely with Product, UX, Content, and Business stakeholders to ensure the AEM platform and front-end ecosystem scale reliably to support best-in-class, high-traffic, revenue-generating digital experiences.

What You'll Do:

AEM Platform Ownership

• Own the technical strategy, roadmap, and overall health of the Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) platform
• Lead AEM upgrades, security, performance optimization, and scalability initiatives
• Lead the evaluation and integration of AI-enabled capabilities within the AEM ecosystem, including content intelligence, personalization, search, and experience optimization.
• Partner with Product and Content teams to enable AI-assisted content workflows (e.g., content generation, tagging, summarization, or optimization) while maintaining brand quality and governance.
• Design, build, and review AEM components, templates, workflows, and content models
• Establish and evolve best practices for AEM development, deployment, and operations
• Act as the primary technical point of contact with Adobe and manage the vendor relationship

Front-End Technical Leadership (Primary Focus)

• Lead front-end architecture for guest-facing web experiences built on AEM
• Design and implement reusable UI components and front-end frameworks
• Design and implement AI-enhanced user experiences, such as intelligent search, recommendations, conversational interfaces, or dynamic content personalization.
• Write, review, and optimize production-quality code using JavaScript and TypeScript
• Provide hands-on technical leadership for React and Angular implementations
• Champion performance optimization, accessibility (WCAG), SEO, and responsive design
• Partner with UX, Design, and Content teams to translate designs into scalable, maintainable front-end solutions
• Drive adoption and consistency of shared UI components and design systems

Full-Stack & Integration Leadership

• Design, implement, and review APIs, microservices, and backend integrations supporting business experiences
• Contribute hands-on development across the stack as needed to unblock teams or accelerate delivery
• Define integration strategies with internal systems and third-party services
• Collaborate with architects on cloud-native and AI solutions
• Ensure strong alignment between front-end, back-end, and infrastructure layers

Engineering Excellence & Delivery

• Actively participate in development while leading code reviews to ensure quality, security, and maintainability
• Identify, prioritize, and remediate technical debt through hands-on contribution and backlog planning
• Translate business requirements into clear technical designs, stories, and implementation plans
• Guide estimation, planning, and delivery of complex initiatives
• Ensure CI/CD, monitoring, logging, and observability are built into all solutions
• Review and approve solution designs and technical documentation
• Ensure you remain up to date with emerging technologies so you can make informed recommendations

Team Leadership & Mentorship

• Mentor and coach engineers through code reviews, pairing, and design discussions
• Provide technical leadership to both onshore and offshore development teams
• Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and high-performing engineering culture
• Promote effective use of AI-assisted developer tools to improve code quality, velocity, and documentation.
• Lead by example through strong engineering practices, ownership, and accountability

• Must have at least 7+ years of professional software engineering experience
• Must have 5+ years of hands-on experience with Adobe Experience Manager, including AEM as a Cloud Service
• Demonstrated ability to lead technical decision-making, influence architecture across teams, and align engineering solutions with business outcomes
• An advocate for a diverse and inclusive culture that encourages innovation and ensures every team member feels a sense of belonging
• Strong expertise in modern front-end development using JavaScript and TypeScript
• Hands-on experience with Node.js , React and Angular in large-scale applications
• Must have solid full-stack experience with Java, Spring, Spring Boot, RESTful APIs, and microservices
• Experience designing and operating CI/CD pipelines
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Splunk, AppDynamics, etc.)
• Strong understanding of object-oriented design and software architecture principles
• Experience working in agile development environments, * 10+ years of experience building and supporting enterprise-scale, customer-facing platforms
• AEM certifications
• Experience with headless or hybrid AEM architectures
• Experience integrating AI or ML-powered services into customer-facing web applications.
• Familiarity with AI-enabled CMS, personalization, search, or recommendation systems.
• Understanding of responsible AI principles in enterprise or consumer-facing environments.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools in large engineering teams.
• Experience with cloud-based technologies like AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure
• Experience with Jira including reviewing and updating requirements and user stories
• Expertise creating UML diagrams to document technical implementation

Required Education:

• Bachelor's degree (or foreign equivalent) in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

Preferred Education:

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or a related discipline

The hiring range for this position in Orlando is $148,300.00 - $180,000.00 per year. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate's geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.

"We Power the Magic!" That's our motto at Disney Experiences (DX). Our team creates world-class immersive digital experiences for the Company's premier vacation brands including Disney's Parks & Resorts worldwide, Disney Cruise Line, Disney Vacation Club, Storyliving by Disney, Adventures by Disney, and National Geographic Expeditions. This role sits in the Disney Signature Experience organization within Technology & Digital for Disney Experiences. It supports high-visibility, guest-facing digital platforms and works closely with Storyliving by Disney, Adventures by Disney and National Geographic Expeditions (A&E) businesses.