Senior Staff Data Engineer

Welcome to Warner Bros. Discovery... the stuff dreams are made of.

Who We Are...

When we say, "the stuff dreams are made of," we're not just referring to the world of wizards, dragons and superheroes, or even to the wonders of Planet Earth. Behind WBD's vast portfolio of iconic content and beloved brands, are the storytellers bringing our characters to life, the creators bringing them to your living rooms and the dreamers creating what's next...

From brilliant creatives, to technology trailblazers, across the globe, WBD offers career defining opportunities, thoughtfully curated benefits, and the tools to explore and grow into your best selves. Here you are supported, here you are celebrated, here you can thrive.

We are the now and the next. The power behind the people building the future. We are born from the spirit of innovation. We are created from the idea that people around the world want more, need more, deserve more. We are the home of the global digital revolution. We are CNN.

To see what it's like to work at CNN, follow @WBDLife on Instagram and X!

About the Team:

With deep domain expertise, advanced technical capabilities, and a proven track record of successful collaborations, the AI Enablement & Machine Learning team at CNN is accelerating our digital transformation through strategic applications of machine learning and AI technologies.

The Data Platform group within this team builds and maintains the data infrastructure, pipelines, and tooling that enable CNN's Machine Learning and AI Systems teams to efficiently access, transform, and serve data for experimentation and production use cases. This includes data pipelines for feature engineering, model training, and inference; data observability across all ML/AI data dependencies; and the design and operation of CNN's feature store. The Data Platform does not serve analytics or business intelligence - a separate organization owns that. Our focus is entirely on powering ML and AI.

Our vision is that CNN's ML and AI teams have seamless access to high-quality, well-governed data that powers model development and production systems.

Your New Role...

As a Senior Staff Data Engineer, you will work across teams to design, build, and operate the data foundations that power ML training, feature computation, and real-time inference for our Machine Learning and AI Systems teams.
You will partner with ML engineers, platform engineers, and editorial and product teams to discover data needs, build reliable data pipelines, and deliver high-quality data products that empower and accelerate the team.

Key challenges you will tackle:

Feature Store: Design and architect CNN's feature store, enabling ML teams to access high-quality, reusable features without data engineering dependencies - with consistency across training and inference

Data Pipeline Reliability & Observability: Establish comprehensive data observability across all ML/AI data dependencies, with automated quality checks and clear SLAs for production ML workloads

Experimentation Data Infrastructure: Eliminate data access as a blocker for ML experimentation - MLEs should be able to independently run, analyze, and trust experiments with self-service tooling

Platform Migration Support: Support the Outerbounds migration by ensuring data pipelines and dependencies transition cleanly with zero production disruptions

What You'll Do

• Design and own data pipelines and products that support ML training, feature storage, and inference for Machine Learning and AI Systems teams
• Model datasets and schemas optimized for ML features and real-time (low-latency) inference
• Establish data quality, testing, and observability across all ML/AI data dependencies
• Collaborate with ML engineers and AI Systems engineers to translate requirements into durable data products and interfaces
• Set engineering standards, review designs/code, mentor engineers, and lead cross-team initiatives

The Essentials

• 10+ years building production data solutions. Strong SQL and data modeling.
• Expertise in modern data tools (Kafka, Airflow, Spark, etc.)
• Expertise with distributed systems and a strong understanding of how data modeling impacts what is possible
• Proficiency in several programming languages
• Passion for data quality and reliability; comfort owning systems end-to-end in a fast-moving environment
• Comfortable working cross-functionally with ML engineers and AI application teams
• Experience with streaming and event-driven systems

The Nice to Haves

• Proficiency in Go and/or Python
• Experience with Snowflake, DynamoDB, and OpenSearch
• Cloud infrastructure & IaC experience, especially AWS & Terraform
• ML platform tooling familiarity (e.g., Metaflow, SageMaker)
• Experience with experimentation and A/B testing
• Experience designing or operating feature stores

How We Get Things Done...

This last bit is probably the most important! Here at WBD, our guiding principles are the core values by which we operate and are central to how we get things done. You can find them at www.wbd.com/guiding-principles/ along with some insights from the team on what they mean and how they show up in their day to day. We hope they resonate with you and look forward to discussing them during your interview.

Championing Inclusion at WBD
Warner Bros. Discovery embraces the opportunity to build a workforce that reflects a wide array of perspectives, backgrounds and experiences. Being an equal opportunity employer means that we take seriously our responsibility to consider qualified candidates on the basis of merit, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, mental or physical disability, and genetic information, marital status, citizenship status, military status, protected veteran status or any other category protected by law.

If you're a qualified candidate with a disability and you require adjustments or accommodations during the job application and/or recruitment process, please visit our accessibility page for instructions to submit your request.

In compliance with local law, we are disclosing the compensation, or a range thereof, for roles in locations where legally required. Actual salaries will vary based on several factors, including but not limited to external market data, internal equity, location, skill set, experience, and/or performance. Base pay is just one component of Warner Bros. Discovery's total compensation package for employees. Pay Range: $159,600.00 - $296,400.00 salary per year. Other rewards may include annual bonuses, short- and long-term incentives, and program-specific awards. In addition, Warner Bros. Discovery provides a variety of benefits to employees, including health insurance coverage, an employee wellness program, life and disability insurance, a retirement savings plan, paid holidays and sick time and vacation.