Principal Machine Learning Engineer

Job Summary: As a Principal Machine Learning Engineer, you will define and own the technical architecture and strategic direction of the N&E ML Platform across a large, complex problem space spanning Disney's News & Entertainment portfolio. You will drive step-function improvements in personalization, recommendation systems, and ML infrastructure - not just at the feature level, but across entire product and platform domains. You will serve as a thought leader who bridges business objectives and technical execution, partnering with senior leadership, product, and cross-org engineering communities to set the standard for ML excellence within News & Entertainment. Your impact will be measured by the quantifiable outcomes you drive for our guests and the durable technical foundations you build for the teams around you. Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:-Focus on major areas of work, typically 20% or more of role 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. Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic 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 spacesDeep expertise in data science, deep learning algorithms, and statistical methods applied to real-world, large-scale engineering problemsDemonstrated experience owning architecture across a significant platform or product domain - including authoring architecture documents, driving reviews, and leading implementationProven ability to drive quantifiable improvements in ML platform capabilities, personalization quality, or recommendation system performanceExperience designing and evolving backend microservices for large-scale distributed systems using RESTStrong expertise with cloud infrastructure, preferably AWS (Step Functions, Lambda, Glue, SQS, SNS, Personalize) Deep hands-on experience with big data technologies such as Databricks, Spark, Kinesis, and KafkaExperience leading incident response for high priority incidents and driving reliability programs across a team or platformActive participation in cross-organizational engineering communities, standards-setting, and architectural governanceProven track record as a metrics-driven technical leader who connects engineering decisions to business outcomesExceptional communication, influence, and collaboration skills — comfortable presenting to and aligning senior leadership and cross-functional stakeholdersExperience working in Agile/Scrum environments with strong prioritization and stakeholder management skillsPreferred QualificationsExperience with agentic AI workflows and frameworks (e.g. LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI) and applying them to automate complex ML and data engineering tasksFamiliarity with AI-assisted development tools such as Claude, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot to accelerate software development lifecycle and engineering productivityFamiliarity with prompt engineering, fine-tuning, and evaluation frameworks for large language models in production environmentsExperience with MLOps platforms and modern model lifecycle management tools (e.g. MLflow, SageMaker, Vertex AI) The hiring range for this position in Glendale, California is $207,400 - $278,100 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.

Job ID: 10157433

Location: Glendale, California

Job Posting Company: Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology 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, email Candidate.Accommodations@Disney.com with your request. This email address is not for general employment inquiries or correspondence. We will only respond to those requests that are related to the accessibility of the online application system due to a disability.