Principal Machine Learning Engineer

Job Summary:

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 think you’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. 

User State and Familiar Personalization 

The User State and Familiar personalization team builds critical User Capabilities that are shared across all experiences on the streaming services: Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ and Star+. We implement reliable, high-throughput services and pipelines for gathering information about our users,and delivering personalized experiences. We’re a fast-paced, dynamic, collaborative and fun team, and are looking for someone who can slot right in and start delivering from day 1.  

Job Summary: 

As a Principal ML Engineer in the User Foundations team, you will be partnering closely with the Engineering, Architecture, and Product teams to develop models for tackling a  multitude of exciting challenges, including personalization, fraud, account sharing  detection. We look for someone with deep analytical and modeling expertise, a proven  track record of thought leadership and eagerness to drive impact. Your work will impact  Disney+, Hulu and ESPN. 

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role: 

• Modeling: Design, build and improve machine learning models. Work end to end  From data collection, feature generation and selection, algorithm development,  Forecasting, visualization and communicating of model results.

• Collaborate with engineering to produce models. Drive experimentation to test impact of model-based optimization. 

• Deep analysis: Develop comprehensive understanding of audience, brand and asset data structures. Mine large data sets to identify opportunities for driving Engagement and performance 

• Visualization of Complex Data sets: Development of prototype solutions,  Mathematical models, algorithms, and robust analytics leading to actionable Insights communicated clearly and visually. 

• Partnership: Partner closely with stakeholders to identify and unlock opportunities, and with other data teams to improve platform capabilities around  Data modeling, data visualization, experimentation and data architecture. 

Basic Qualifications  

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience

• Minimum of 10 years of experience designing, building, deploying data pipelines and applications

• Proven experience building machine learning solutions 

• Excellent analytical skills, advanced level of statistics knowledge 

• Strong expertise with Python and libraries such as scikit-learn, SciPy 

• Familiarity with data platforms and applications such as Databricks, Jupyter,  Snowflake, Airflow, Github 

• Familiarity with designing and analyzing A/B testing and other experiment types 

• Ability to adapt quickly in a fast-moving environment with shifting priorities 

• Strong communication skills, for both technical and non-technical audiences 

• Ability to handle multiple tasks concurrently and in a timely manner, including large and complex ones

• Demonstrated leadership experience, including people and project management 

 Preferred Qualifications: 

• Master’s or Ph.D degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software,  Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience

The hiring range for this position in Santa Monica, CA is $199,000.00 266,800.00. 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.