Lead Machine Learning Engineer (Artificial Intelligence Engineer)

Disney Cruise Line - The Walt Disney Company; San Francisco (CA); On-site; Confidential; Full time

Job summary

A leading entertainment company seeks a Lead ML Engineer to drive AI capabilities for its customer service and commerce platforms. The role demands expertise in LLM solutions, strong programming skills, and the ability to collaborate effectively across teams. Ideal candidates will have a background in data science or a similar field, with a minimum of seven years in tech roles. This key position offers a competitive salary range and a chance to innovate within a globally recognized organization.

Benefits

Medical benefits

Financial benefits

Bonus and/or long-term incentive units

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in a technology role.
• 2+ years building, deploying, and evaluating LLM solutions.
• Familiarity with big data platforms.

Responsibilities

• Analyze and prototype AI-driven solutions for customer service.
• Own and maintain production AI systems for performance.
• Collaborate with other AI teams at Disney.

Skills

Python

SQL

Problem Solving

Communication

Collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, or Mathematics

Tools

Pandas

NumPy

MySQL

PostgreSQL

Spark

Databricks

Snowflake

Airflow

Jupyter

GitHub

Job description

About The Walt Disney Company:

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise with the following business segments: media networks, parks and resorts, studio entertainment, consumer products and interactive media. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family. Disney’s stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.

About Commerce Growth & Identity:

The Commerce, Growth & Identity (CGI) team is dedicated to three business-critical areas at Disney that will help transform its media business. We build innovative and cutting-edge capabilities to drive subscriptions, engagement and monetization across Disney’s streaming and digital products. We enable the wide range of Disney brands to connect and engage with consumers through a unified identity, powered by shared services that are trustworthy and seamless to integrate with.

As a Lead ML engineer, you will be responsible to:

• Rapidly analyze and prototype AI-driven solutions that address key pain points for both customers using self-service systems and customer service (CS) agents interacting with internal tooling.

• Own and maintain production AI systems, including those leveraging large language models (LLMs); this includes optimization, fine-tuning, and debugging to ensure robustness and performance at scale.

• Bridge customer support needs with commerce platform capabilities, identifying which problems can be solved using existing infrastructure and which require new AI-powered solutions.

• Assess the effectiveness of deployed AI solutions through a data-driven lens, continuously iterating on what works and sunsetting or replacing what doesn’t deliver meaningful impact.

• Collaborate with other AI-focused teams across Disney Streaming, sharing innovations and adopting best practices to drive consistency, scalability, and impact in AI initiatives.

Minimal Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Data Science, Computer Science, Statistics, Mathematics, or a related field; PhD is a plus.

• 7+ years of experience in a technology role.

• 2+ years of hands-on experience building, deploying, and evaluating LLM based solutions. 5+ years engineering experience

• Proficiency in Python, SQL, and other relevant programming languages.

• Experience with data wrangling and analysis tools such as Pandas, NumPy, and working knowledge of databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL.

• Familiarity with big data and workflow platforms, including Spark, Databricks, Snowflake, Airflow, Jupyter, and GitHub.

• Excellent problem-solving abilities, with strong communication and collaboration skills.

Nice to haves:

• Experience working with Amazon Web Services.

• Experience with Tableau, Power BI, or similar platforms.

• Experience building anomaly detection models.

The hiring range for this position in New York or Seattle is $175,800 to $235,700 per year, in Los Angeles is $167,700 to $224,900 per year, and in San Francisco is $183,700 to $246,400 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.