Senior ML Platform Architect & Personalization Lead

ESPN

Glendale (CA)

On-site

USD 211,000 - 282,000

Full time

5 hours ago

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Job summary

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is seeking a Principal Machine Learning Engineer to define the architecture and strategic direction of the News & Entertainment ML Platform. You will lead ML initiatives spanning ABC News, ABC Entertainment, National Geographic, Marvel, and Disney Studios, driving personalization, recommendations, and scalable infrastructure.

You will own end-to-end architecture, drive cross-organizational standards, mentor senior engineers, and align ML work

Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, Statistics, Math, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience
10+ years of experience building and operating ML engineering systems in production environments, with a track record of owning large, complex problem spaces
Deep expertise in data science, deep learning algorithms, and statistical methods applied to real-world, large-scale engineering problems
Proven ability to drive quantifiable improvements in ML platform capabilities, personalization quality, or recommendation system performance
Experience designing and evolving backend microservices for large-scale distributed systems using REST
Strong expertise with cloud infrastructure, preferably AWS
Deep hands-on experience with big data technologies such as Databricks, Spark, Kinesis, and Kafka
Experience leading incident response for high priority incidents and driving reliability programs across a team or platform
Active participation in cross-organizational engineering communities, standards-setting, and architectural governance
Proven track record as a metrics-driven technical leader who connects engineering decisions to business outcomes
Exceptional communication, influence, and collaboration skills — comfortable presenting to and aligning senior leadership and cross-functional stakeholders
Experience working in Agile/Scrum environments with strong prioritization and stakeholder management skills

Responsibilities

Architecture Ownership: Define and own the end-to-end architecture of the N&E ML platform across a large problem space spanning ABC News, ABC Entertainment, National Geographic, Marvel, and Disney Studios. Author architecture documents, drive them through review, and oversee implementation to ensure solutions are scalable, reliable, and aligned with platform-wide standards.
Strategic Technical Leadership: Identify, scope, and prioritize the most impactful and time-sensitive ML workstreams across the N&E portfolio. Break down and sequence complex initiatives, proactively surface risks to leadership, and drive outcomes with a clear metrics-driven mindset.
ML Platform & Infrastructure: Drive the design and evolution of infrastructure supporting the full ML lifecycle across diverse content types and brands: data pipelines, workflow orchestration, feature stores, batch training, and low-latency online serving. Champion reliability, quality, and operational excellence across the platform.
Innovation & Industry Awareness: Stay at the forefront of industry trends in ML, AI, and data engineering. Proactively identify and champion the adoption of new technologies, frameworks, and patterns that drive improvement across the N&E portfolio (e.g. recommendation systems, LLMs, RAGs, object detection, autogenerated content tagging).
Incident & Reliability Ownership: Own and speak to production incidents during weekly meetings with leadership. Hold the team to the right engineering processes and drive a culture of reliability, observability, and continuous improvement across the N&E ML problem space.
Cross-Org Engagement: Actively participate in and contribute to the broader Machine Learning community across Disney Entertainment & ESPN. Drive and influence engineering standards, cross-org programs, and best practices that extend beyond the N&E ML team.
Business & Objectives Alignment: Serve as a thought leader who deeply understands the business objectives and problems across the N&E portfolio - not just the technical ones. Lead metrics-driven programs that connect ML platform investments directly to measurable guest experience and business outcomes across all brands.
Mentorship & Culture: Mentor and elevate senior engineers, fostering a culture of ownership, technical rigor, and continuous learning. Be a confident, vocal, and optimistic leader who inspires the team and drives outcomes people want to rally around.