Senior Principal Machine Learning Engineer, Ad Platforms

Sr Principal Machine Learning Engineer

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.

Ad Platforms is responsible for Disney's industry-leading ad technology and products – driving advertising performance, innovation, and value in Disney's sports, news, and entertainment content, across all media platforms.

As our team's Sr Principal Machine Learning Engineer (IC leadership role), you will apply your industry-tested experience, deep technical knowledge of software and systems including Machine Learning and AI patterns, platforms and infrastructure, and leadership skills to unblock and guide our ML and Research teams to create scalable, performant, maintainable, and testable models and pipelines.

Daily, you should bring:

• Excellent communication and collaboration across teams and organizations.
• Strong and sound understanding of architectural best practices and principles in machine learning and AI domains
• Proficiency in designing and implementing robust, scalable, measurable models and pipelines.
• A passion for mentoring and learning in a very dynamic and fast-paced environment
• Proven ability to collaborate with Product and Sales teams, translating requirements into well-defined technical implementations. Skilled in defining technical and operational metrics for measuring system health.
• Knowledge of relevant and upcoming technologies and their potential application within the stack.
• A keen eye for potential optimizations and enhancements
• Kindness and pragmatic optimism.
• Your unique view and experience.
• A full toolkit of influence models and clear evidence based decision making methods

Responsibilities and Expectations:

• Reviewing designs and implementations for best practices
• Influence on multi-year technical roadmap
• Cross-org impact
• Shaping product/business strategy
• Part of the Architecture Guild within Ad Platforms
• Reading requirements documentation from Product, translating into areas of work and partnering with team leads through execution as needed.
• Exploring, researching, implementing proofs-of-concept, and proposing solutions that will reduce cost and overhead, improve maintainability, minimize the time features take to be in production.
• Defining, reviewing, and documenting software and models in a high throughput, low latency environment.
• Mentoring and inspiring team members in all aspects of professional software development.
• Support on call activities with the MLP and Research teams
• Establishing shared technical standards and working practices across globally distributed ML teams.

Basic Qualifications:

• BS or MS in Computer Science/Engineering or relevant work experience
• 12+ years of software engineering experience
• Demonstrable analytical / problem-solving / design skills in a highly distributed and highly available services ecosystem
• Strong foundations in algorithms, data structures, and numerical optimization with experience in programming languages such as Python (primary), Java and SQL
• Experience with tools and frameworks such as TensorFlow, Pytorch, Hugging Face libraries
• Model optimization and inference (TensorRT, ONNX, DeepSpeed)
• Ad Tech Industry knowledge

Deep expertise in:

• LLMs and OpenAI GPT models, Claude, Gemini, Llama, and similar models.
• Fine-tuning (SFT, PEFT, RLHF, adapters)
• Prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), context management, and multi-agent systems and MCPs
• Embeddings, and vector search
• Tokenization

Preferred Qualifications:

• PhD in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, or a related technical field

The hiring range for this position in Santa Monica, CA is $228,700 - $306,700 per year and in Seattle is $239,700 - $321,400. 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.

About Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology:

At Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology, we're blending imagination and innovation to reimagine the ways people experience and engage with the world's most beloved stories and products. Our work is wide-ranging and deeply sophisticated. We create amazing experiences, transform the future of media, and build products and platforms that enable the connection between people everywhere and the stories and sports they love.

Disney's ability to marry world-class technology with one-of-a-kind creativity makes us unique. It is at the heart of our past, present, and future. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers.

About The Walt Disney Company:

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise that includes three core business segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Experiences. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family. Disney's stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.

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

Disney Entertainment & Sports LLC is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, military or veteran status, medical condition, genetic information or disability, or any other basis prohibited by federal, state or local law. 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.

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