Principal Machine Learning Engineer

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 here:

• 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.

The Commerce, Growth, & Identity (CGI) team is dedicated to three business-critical areas at Disney that will help transform its media business. They create seamless user experiences for consumers who can choose from a wide range of subscription plans, enabling more choice and flexibility. The CGI team is also focused on building innovative and cutting-edge capabilities that will drive subscriptions, engagement, and monetization across Disney’s streaming and digital products.

Job Summary

Our teams build systems that power all the Commerce workflows within Disney Streaming. We implement reliable, high-request services that power user experiences across web, mobile, and living room devices. We are looking for a passionate Senior Principal Machine Learning engineer who wants to help build and operate these critical services that support all our users!

We're a fast-paced, dynamic, collaborative, and fun team, and we're looking forward to learning more about you!

Responsibilities

• Work with a distributed team of engineers across multiple organizations, building software collaboratively.

• Work and influence on all parts of the ML stack, from analyzing commerce data to running controlled experiments, building models, writing data pipelines, and implementing updates.

• Help the various software teams adopt AI tools to improve productivity - drive the adoption across the commerce organization.

• Work with product management to help translate business requirements into technical solutions and drive the delivery of key projects across various cross-functional teams.

• Represent Disney streaming in various internal and external conferences blogs, and mentor Senior engineers.

• Champion cross-team projects.

• Coach and mentor other specialists on the team to ensure that all software utilizes industry best practices. Collaborate efficiently with product management, technical program management, operations, and other engineering teams to capture requirements, drive implementation, and provide transparency.

Basic Qualifications

• 10+ years of related experience in applied Machine Learning. Strong programming skills in object-oriented languages (Scala / Python / Java/ C++ or equivalent),  Data engineering skills,  and a firm grasp of computer science fundamentals (data structures, algorithms, databases, etc.).

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD in CS/ML or related field.

• Industry experience building end-to-end Machine Learning infrastructure and/or building and productionizing Machine Learning models.

• Exposure to architectural patterns of large, high-scale software applications (e.g., well-designed APIs, high-volume data pipelines, efficient algorithms, and models).

• Experience with test-driven development, familiar with A/B testing, incremental delivery and deployment.

• An ability to work both independently and collaboratively.

• A broad perspective on problem-solving.

• Strong communication skills and a desire to share your knowledge with team members and others.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience directly managing and mentoring a team.

The hiring range for this position in Los Angeles is $202,900 to $272,100 per year, in San Francisco is $222,200 to $297,900 per year, and in New York or Seattle is $212,600 to $285,100 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.