The Walt Disney Company is hiring: Sr Machine Learning Engineer in New York

Sr Machine Learning Engineer

Job ID: 10143265
Location: New York, New York, United States
Business: Disney Entertainment Television

Job Summary

This is not a remote role. You must be in the area or willing to relocate. The Senior Machine Learning Engineer serves as an individual contributor responsible for leading end-to-end development of machine learning solutions, from data and feature design through model deployment and monitoring. The role applies machine learning techniques in code (supervised/unsupervised learning, classification/regression, clustering, and deep learning where appropriate) to develop systems that predict outcomes at scale for identity, audience, and cross-platform measurement use cases. It also involves building scalable ML pipelines and the data foundations required to capture, manage, store, and utilize large-scale structured and unstructured datasets, ensuring data integrity and interoperability across systems.

Responsibilities and Duties

• Develop, train, and deploy ML models for audience identity, look‑alike modeling, and cross‑platform measurement; translate algorithms and technical specifications into clean, testable Python/SQL code; containerize workloads via Docker/Kubernetes.


• Design and own scalable ML data and feature pipelines using orchestration tools (Airflow/Dagster) to capture, validate, and deliver cross‑media datasets across distributed cloud and/or platform environments.


• Feature engineering and data preparation: develop reusable feature sets, manage metadata/lineage, and optimize storage/performance in Snowflake or Databricks to support training and inference.


• MLOps and monitoring: implement CI/CD, model versioning/registry patterns, automated evaluation, and drift detection; build dashboards/alerts to ensure model reliability, reproducibility, and data quality in production.


• Stakeholder collaboration and experimentation: lead offline/online experiment design, interpret results, and translate findings into actionable product enhancements for analytics, product, and engineering teams.


• Data privacy and governance compliance: apply GDPR/CCPA principles, enforce PII safeguards, and contribute to documentation and audit readiness.


• Team enablement: mentor junior engineers through code reviews and design reviews; share best practices and reusable tooling.

Minimum Qualifications

• Must have production experience with deep‑learning, genAI, or retrieval‑augmented systems (PyTorch, vector databases) and real‑time data pipelines (Kafka, Pub/Sub, Kinesis).


• At least 5 years of professional experience in machine learning engineering delivering production‑grade models and ML pipelines at scale.


• Advanced coding skills in Python and SQL; strong software‑engineering best practices (version control, CI/CD, unit testing, code reviews).


• Demonstrated experience applying ML techniques in code to develop predictive systems (supervised/unsupervised learning; deep learning where appropriate).


• Hands‑on experience with cloud‑native data platforms and distributed processing (Snowflake/Databricks/Spark/BigQuery) and orchestration (Airflow/Dagster).


• Experience with containerization and production deployment patterns (Docker/Kubernetes) and operational monitoring.

Preferred Qualifications

• 5+ years total experience, with hands‑on work in media, advertising technology, or cross‑platform audience measurement.


• Familiarity with modern MLOps stacks (MLflow, Kubeflow, Vertex AI, SageMaker) and model‑governance practices (metadata, lineage, drift detection).


• Certifications such as Google Professional Machine Learning Engineer, AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty, or equivalent cloud/data credentials.


• Contributions to open‑source ML or data‑engineering projects, conference presentations, or peer‑reviewed publications.

Education

• Required: Bachelor’s degree in a relevant technical or science field (e.g., computer science, data science, mathematics).


• Preferred: Master’s degree or PhD in a relevant field (e.g., Applied Math, Computer Science, Computational Science, Operations Research, Data Science).

Compensation

The hiring range for this position in New York City is $148,700.00 - $190,000.00 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.

Equal Employment Opportunity

American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. 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.

Disability Accommodation for Employment Applications

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.