Lead Machine Learning Engineer - News

Disney Entertainment; Glendale (CA); On-site; USD 142,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology is seeking a Lead Machine Learning Engineer to shape the technical direction of the News ML Platform. You will drive scalable learning, inference, and monitoring, explore data deeply, and collaborate across product, data, and engineering teams to deliver personalized guest experiences.

You will guide algorithmic innovation roadmaps, ensure scalable and impactful solutions, and align work with stakeholder needs in a fast-paced environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS or related field, or equivalent work experience.
• 7+ years of software engineering experience with scalable systems.
• 5+ years building and deploying ML systems in production environments.
• Strong knowledge of data science, DL algorithms, and statistical methods.
• Experience with REST microservices and cloud infrastructure (AWS).

Responsibilities

• Own complex ML initiatives end-to-end from design to production deployment.
• Build infrastructure for ML data pipelines, orchestration, and feature libraries.
• Develop ML solutions for recommendations, detection, tagging, and RAGs.
• Collaborate with product, editorial, and engineering teams to translate requirements.
• Prioritize workstreams, manage risks, and ensure timely delivery.
• Promote code quality, testing, CI/CD, observability, and incident response.
• Mentor engineers and foster a culture of ownership and collaboration.
• Contribute documentation and share knowledge across teams.

Skills

7+ years software engineering

5+ years ML systems in production

Data science / deep learning

REST backend microservices

AWS cloud infrastructure

Spark / Databricks

Kinesis / Kafka

Datadog / observability

Agile / Scrum

Excellent communication

Education

Bachelor’s degree in CS or related field

Tools

AWS

Lambda

Step Functions

Glue

SQS

SNS

Personalize

Spark

Databricks

Kinesis

Kafka

REST

Datadog

Job description

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’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.

Product Engineering is a unified team responsible for the engineering of Disney Entertainment & ESPN digital and streaming products and platforms. This includes product engineering, media engineering, quality assurance, engineering behind personalization, commerce, lifecycle, and identity.

Job Summary:

The News ML team is responsible for building robust data pipelines and advanced machine learning platforms that deliver personalized experiences to users across ABC News, Good Morning America, and local news stations. Our services leverage machine learning models to enable real-time content personalization and targeted distribution across web, mobile, and connected TV platforms, ensuring that users receive the most relevant and engaging news content tailored to their interests. Our mission is to drive seamless, resilient, and low-latency personalized content delivery at scale, while continuously advancing our ML infrastructure and recommendation algorithms.

As a Lead Machine Learning Engineer, you will play a leading role in shaping the technical direction of the News ML Platform. You will drive infrastructure for scalable learning, inference, and monitoring, conduct in-depth data exploration and analysis, and collaborate across product, data, and engineering teams to power exceptional, personalized guest experiences. Your work will directly support strategic initiatives to help shape the roadmap for algorithmic innovation while ensuring that solutions are scalable, impactful, and aligned with stakeholder needs.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Own complex technical initiatives end-to-end, from technical design through production deployment and operational excellence

• Design and develop infrastructure supporting the full cycle of machine learning, including data pipelines and workflow orchestration, data discovery and quality tools, and feature libraries

• Drive data and ML-driven solutions for diverse engineering use cases such as recommendation systems, object detection, autogenerated tagging solutions, RAGs

• Partner with product, editorial, and engineering stakeholders to translate business requirements into robust technical solutions

• Strategically prioritize initiatives and technical workstreams to deliver the highest-impact and most time-sensitive outcomes, while proactively identifying, communicating, and mitigating risks to ensure successful execution

• Champion engineering best practices across code quality, testing, CI/CD, observability, and incident response

• Mentor and coach engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement

• Contribute to technical documentation and promote knowledge sharing across teams

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Minimum and Preferred. Inclusive of Licenses/Certs (include functional experience as well as behavioral attributes and/or leadership capabilities)

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, Statistics, Math, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience

• 7+ years of software engineering experience

• 5+ years of hands‑on experience developing and deploying machine learning systems in production

• Expertise in data science, deep learning algorithms, or statistical methods to solve real‑world engineering problems

• Comfortable operating at all levels of the predictive stack, including data collection, data analysis, feature engineering, batch training and low‑latency online serving

• Experience designing and developing backend microservices for large-scale distributed systems using REST

• Experience with cloud infrastructure, preferably AWS (Step Functions, Lambda, Glue, SQS, SNS, Personalize)

• Familiarity with developing and deploying Spark and ML pipelines

• Hands‑on experience with big data technologies such as Databricks, Kinesis, Kafka

• Proven leadership, coaching, and mentoring skills, with the ability to inspire and empower a team towards achieving business goals

• Experience with observability tools for metrics, logging, and monitoring such as Datadog

• Experience working in Agile/Scrum development environments

• Excellent communication skills and a commitment to collaboration in a fast‑paced, guest‑focused environment

The hiring range for this position in New York, NY is $148,700 - $199,400 per year and in Glendale, CA is $141,900 - $190,300. 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.

Disclaimer

This position is with Disney Entertainment & Sports LLC, which is part of a business we call Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology.

Disney Entertainment & Sports LLC is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Disney champions a business environment where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best stories and be relevant in a constantly evolving world.

DISABILITY ACCOMMODATION FOR EMPLOYMENT APPLICATIONS

The Walt Disney Company and its Affiliated Companies are Equal Employment Opportunity employers and welcome all job seekers including individuals with disabilities and veterans with disabilities. If you have a disability and believe you need a reasonable accommodation in order to search for a job opening or apply for a position, visit the Disney candidate disability accommodations FAQs (https://support.disneycareers.com/hc/en-us/sections/32131060143380-Candidate-Disability-Accommodations-FAQs) . We will only respond to those requests that are related to the accessibility of the online application system due to a disability.

The Walt Disney Company is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Disney fosters a business culture where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best stories and be relevant in a rapidly changing world.