Lead Machine Learning Engineer - ESPN+ Personalization
Job Description
Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is seeking a Lead Machine Learning Engineer to take ownership of major components of their next-generation streaming platform's real-time video recommendation system. This role combines deep machine learning expertise with strong software engineering skills to drive production-grade ML solutions at scale.
As part of Disney's media technology backbone, you'll be working on building a foundational ML team that will power the personalization experience for millions of users. The position offers an opportunity to work with cutting-edge technologies in recommendation systems, deep learning, and real-time serving infrastructure.
The role involves leading technical design and delivery of key subsystems including modeling, data pipelines, real-time serving, and online experimentation. You'll be working closely with the Principal MLE, product teams, infrastructure teams, and other cross-functional partners to drive innovation in content personalization.
Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is a global organization that marries technology with creativity to build world-class products, enhance storytelling, and drive innovation. The team's work impacts millions of users across major platforms like Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, and ABC.
The position offers competitive compensation ranging from $172,300 to $246,400 depending on location and experience, plus comprehensive benefits including medical coverage, bonus potential, and long-term incentives. This is an excellent opportunity for an experienced ML engineer looking to make a significant impact on how millions of people discover and engage with Disney's world-class content.
Key technical areas include recommendation systems, ranking models, deep learning, embedding management at scale, real-time feature stores, and experimentation platforms. The ideal candidate will combine strong technical skills with the ability to mentor others and drive pragmatic solutions in a dynamic product development environment.
Responsibilities For Lead Machine Learning Engineer - ESPN+ Personalization
- Lead the design, development, and deployment of machine learning models for large-scale real-time short-form video recommendation
- Architect and implement key subsystems of the end-to-end personalization pipeline
- Build advanced recommendation models using deep learning and transformers
- Partner with Principal ML Engineer on system architecture decisions
- Conduct deep data analyses on user interactions
- Drive ML experimentation processes and A/B testing
- Establish ML engineering best practices
- Mentor and provide technical guidance to other ML engineers
- Collaborate with product managers, data scientists, and infrastructure teams
Requirements For Lead Machine Learning Engineer - ESPN+ Personalization
- 7+ years of hands-on experience building and deploying machine learning models
- Strong applied ML expertise in personalization and recommendation systems
- Proficiency with modern ML frameworks like TensorFlow, PyTorch
- Experience with real-time feature stores and streaming data pipelines
- Strong software engineering skills with distributed systems
- Excellent communication and technical leadership skills
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure)
Benefits For Lead Machine Learning Engineer - ESPN+ Personalization
- Full range of medical benefits
- Bonus
- Long-term incentive units
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