Senior Machine Learning Engineer

The Walt Disney Company; California; On-site; USD 141,900 - 199,400; Full time

Job summary

The Walt Disney Company is hiring a Machine Learning Engineer to join their team in California. This role emphasizes building and operating distributed data and machine learning infrastructure for real-time sports experiences. You will collaborate with teams to develop streaming data pipelines and ensure systems operate reliably at scale.

The ideal candidate should have 5+ years of industry experience, a strong background in distributed systems, and proficiency in Python. Competitive salary and benefits are offered.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of industry experience building data-intensive or ML-adjacent systems in production.
• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems and data processing architectures.
• Proficiency in Python and working knowledge of Java, Scala, Go, or C++.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain high-throughput batch and streaming data pipelines.
• Develop and operate systems for real-time feature computation.
• Collaborate with applied ML and data science teams.

Skills

Large-scale data systems

Distributed systems

Streaming technologies (Kafka, Kinesis)

Python

Cloud-native environments (AWS, Kubernetes)

Collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science

Tools

Kafka

Kinesis

Spark

Flink

Job description

Job Summary

ESPN is investing in large-scale data infrastructure and real-time processing platforms that power next-generation personalization and live sports experiences. As a Machine Learning Engineer, you will focus on building and operating distributed data and ML infrastructure that supports high-throughput, low-latency data processing and real-time ML use cases.

In this role, you will work closely with senior MLEs, data engineers, platform/SRE, and product teams to develop streaming data pipelines, feature computation systems, and ML-adjacent services that operate reliably at scale. The role emphasizes hands-on engineering, strong fundamentals in distributed systems, and practical experience operating production data infrastructure.

Responsibilities

1) Large-Scale Data Processing & Streaming Systems

• Build and maintain high-throughput batch and streaming data pipelines to support ML, analytics, and real-time decisioning use cases.
• Implement data ingestion, enrichment, aggregation, and transformation workflows using modern distributed data frameworks.
• Ensure pipelines meet latency, reliability, and data quality requirements for downstream ML and product teams.

2) Real-Time Data & Feature Infrastructure

• Develop and operate systems that support real-time feature computation and delivery for online ML services.
• Work with feature stores and event-driven architectures to ensure consistency between offline and online data.
• Improve data freshness, schema evolution, and backward compatibility in streaming environments.

3) ML-Adjacent Infrastructure & Platform Engineering

• Build and operate ML-adjacent services such as inference inputs, feature APIs, and data access layers.
• Contribute to scalable service patterns including autoscaling, rollout strategies, and resiliency mechanisms.
• Partner with platform/SRE teams to improve system availability, performance, and cost efficiency.

4) Reliability, Observability & Operations

• Instrument data and ML infrastructure with metrics, logging, and alerting to support production operations.
• Participate in on-call rotations and incident response for data and ML platforms.
• Identify and remediate data pipeline failures, performance regressions, and operational risks.

5) Collaboration & Engineering Execution

• Collaborate with applied ML and data science teams to enable production ML workflows through reliable data systems.
• Participate in design reviews, code reviews, and technical discussions.
• Follow established platform standards and contribute incremental improvements over time.

Qualifications

Basic Qualification

• Experience building and operating large-scale data or ML systems in production.
• Strong fundamentals in distributed systems and data processing architectures.
• Hands‑on experience with streaming and batch data technologies (e.g., Kafka, Kinesis, Spark, Flink, or equivalent).
• Proficiency in Python and working knowledge of Java, Scala, Go, or C++.
• Experience operating systems in cloud-native environments (AWS, containers, Kubernetes, IaC tools).
• Familiarity with observability and operational best practices for production systems.
• Strong collaboration skills and ability to work effectively across engineering and data teams.

Preferred Qualification

• Experience supporting real-time personalization, recommendation, or analytics systems.
• Familiarity with feature stores, event-driven architectures, and real-time ML pipelines.
• Exposure to ML infrastructure concepts such as inference pipelines, data validation, and model lifecycle tooling.
• Experience optimizing data systems for latency, throughput, and cost efficiency.
• Understanding of experimentation platforms and data instrumentation for online systems.

Experience

• 5+ years of industry experience building data-intensive or ML-adjacent systems in production.

Required Education

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, Machine Learning, or a related field.

Compensation

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 other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.