Senior Machine Learning Engineering Manager, Ad Platforms

ESPN; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 221,000 - 296,000; Full time

Job summary

Disney Entertainment & Sports LLC is seeking a Senior Manager of Machine Learning to lead and mentor a global ML/AI team. You will guide model development, deployment, and governance across ad platforms, ensuring scalable, reliable, and responsible AI solutions in production.

You will partner with product, engineering and data teams to translate business problems into ML strategies, establish best practices, and drive measurable impact across Disney’s media technology platforms.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, engineering, mathematics, statistics, or a related field.
• 10+ years of relevant industry experience, with at least 5 years in people-management.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor and guide senior ICs and managers across data science, ML and AI engineering teams to deliver scalable solutions.
• Define strategic direction for ML projects and collaborate with product and engineering stakeholders.
• Oversee end-to-end ML workflow from data collection to deployment with alignment to platform strategy.
• Foster innovation by exploring new ML techniques, tools and technologies.
• Communicate strategies, progress and results to leadership and cross-functional teams.

Skills

Leadership

ML/AI

Cloud platforms

Python

TensorFlow/PyTorch

JAX

Hugging Face

Cross-functional collaboration

Model deployment

MLOps

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in CS/Engineering/Math/Statistics

Tools

TensorFlow

PyTorch

JAX

Hugging Face

AWS

GCP

Azure

ML platforms

Job description

Technology is at the heart of Disney’s past, present, and future. Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is a global organization of engineers, product developers, designers, technologists, data scientists, and more – all working to build and advance the technological backbone for Disney’s media business globally. The team marries technology with creativity to build world‑class products, enhance storytelling, and drive velocity, innovation, and scalability for our businesses. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers. We work with every part of The Walt Disney Company’s media portfolio to advance the technological foundation and consumer media touch points serving millions of people around the world.

Reasons why you’d love working here

• Building the future of Disney’s media: Our Technologists are designing and building the products and platforms that will power our media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.
• Reach, Scale & Impact: More than ever, Disney’s technology and products serve as a signature doorway for fans' connections with the company’s brands and stories. Disney+. Hulu. ESPN. ABC. ABC News…and many more. These products and brands – and the unmatched stories, storytellers, and events they carry – matter to millions of people globally.
• Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms, and solve complex and distinctive technical problems.

Ad Platforms organization within Disney Entertainment and ESPN Technology is fully responsible for building, enhancing and maintaining high-performance, distributed, microservice-based Advertising Platform across all of Disney online properties, including Hulu and ESPN+. We build and maintain proprietary technology, ranging from ad serving and ad delivery, campaign management, reporting as well as all the integrations internal and external that come with evolving and maintaining a best‑in‑class video advertising business.

Our mission is to advance AI and machine learning capabilities across Ad Platform by delivering scalable, high impact AI/ML and data science solutions that enhance various aspects of ad serving. We are seeking a Senior Manager Machine Learning to join this innovative team. This role offers a unique leadership opportunity for an experienced ML/AI and people leader who thrives at the intersection of technical excellence, strategic impact, and cross‑functional collaboration.

Job Summary

You will apply your battle‑tested experience, deep technical knowledge of software and systems including Machine Learning and AI technologies, and leadership skills to unblock and guide our ML/AI team members to design and build scalable, performant, maintainable, and testable models and pipelines in various domains using industry best practices which are aligned in close collaboration with the ML team in the US highlighting cross‑functional collaboration.

Daily, You Should Bring

• A willingness and desire to effectively communicate and collaborate across teams and systems on architecture, design, and implementation.
• A passion for mentoring, learning, and taking on new challenges.
• A proven ability to work with product teams to translate requirements into well‑defined technical implementations, as well as the ability to define technical and operational metrics to measure system health.
• A keen eye for potential optimizations and enhancements.
• Kindness and pragmatic optimism.
• A deep understanding of model development cycles and AI tool usage.

Responsibilities And Duties Of The Role

• Lead, mentor and guide senior individual contributors and managers across data scientists, machine learning and AI engineers teams to build solutions adhering to industry best practices and deliver scalable solutions including model architecture and algorithm selection.
• Define strategic direction for machine learning projects and collaborate with product and engineering stakeholders.
• Lead by example and always strive to improve the design for more scalable, cleaner, and decoupled implementations.
• Drive adoption of best practices in model development, code quality, testing, and documentation.
• Solid understanding and usage of automated tools (AI) while adhering to company policy.
• Oversee end‑2‑end machine learning workflow, including data collection, model development, deployment and modeling. These are expected to be aligned with the larger platform strategy and tools in collaboration with the global teams to stay consistent across Ad Platforms.
• Foster innovation by exploring new ML techniques, tools, and technologies.
• Communicate strategies, progress, and results to leadership and cross‑functional teams.
• Ensure responsible AI practices, including fairness, explainability, and compliance with privacy and ethical standards.
• Develop partnerships across the organization to identify and prioritize high‑impact ML opportunities.
• Available for On‑Call rotations based on the team’s escalation policy and support schedule for ML/AI solutions.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field.
• 10+ years of relevant industry experience, with at least 5 years in people‑management managing senior ICs and managers.
• Proven ability to translate business problems into scalable ML and GenAI solutions and strong understanding of machine learning fundamentals, deep learning, and statistical modeling.
• Proven experience designing, building, and deploying scalable machine learning models and systems in production.
• Experience deploying ML/GenAI systems at scale using cloud platforms and MLOps practices
• Advanced programming proficiency (e.g., Python, Java, or similar); experience with ML/DL frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch, JAX, Hugging Face).
• Experience building, fine‑tuning, evaluating, and deploying LLM‑based systems (e.g., RAG, prompt engineering, model optimization)
• Demonstrated ability to lead global teams and collaborate across organizational boundaries.

Preferred Qualifications

• Domain knowledge in the Ad Tech industry
• Experience working with large‑scale data and distributed systems.
• Knowledge of cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure) and MLOps pipelines.
• Track record of innovation and contributions to the ML/AI community (publications, talks, open source).

The hiring range for this position in Santa Monica, CA is $210,500.00 - $282,300.00 per year and in Seattle, WA is $220,600.00 - $295,900.00 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.

Disclaimer

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

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. We will only respond to those requests that are related to the accessibility of the online application system due to a disability.

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.