Senior Data Engineer

Warner Bros. Discovery•Atlanta, GA

About The Position

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 ML and AI technologies. Our current products include popular, related and personalized content recommendations, contextual ad targeting, and site search-serving millions of CNN users via CNN web and mobile apps. This year we are partnering with teams across the company to democratize AI at CNN. Our "multiplier" approach allows our team to have outsized organizational impact by providing domain expertise, enabling teams, collaborating deeply, and building shared infrastructure. About the Job/Responsibilities The team is composed of multiple squads: the platform squad along with cross-functional squads that leverage the platform to develop products. As a senior engineer on our platform squad, you will work on a team of 4+ engineers and optimize experimentation, development, and production operations for our ML and AI-powered experiences. You will build and maintain pipelines and APIs, provide developer tooling, and partner on integrations. Here are some of the key challenges our team will tackle this year: Optimize Site Performance: Dynamically deliver personalized content alongside cached assets, improving load times and enhancing user experience with features like page-level deduplication Enhance Data Access: Continue to evolve our pipelines to ensure the timeliest access to instrumentation and content data for feature and model development Accelerate Experimentation: Partner with our Data & Analytics organization to improve the tooling and coordination involved in A/B testing Support Engineering with Foundational Models: As tools like Bedrock emerge, enhance our platform to support them, ensuring we’re prepared for the next generation of AI-powered applications Here are some of the things you can expect to do on a day-to-day basis: Work closely with ML engineering to make data easily accessible and understandable Ensure the reliability and minimize the latency of data delivery for ML use cases Create transparency in our data pipelines with comprehensive telemetry Develop and enforce data engineering, security, data quality standards through automation Collaborate with other engineers to develop and enhance core capabilities, infrastructure, and architecture Leverage vended and open-source cloud technologies to reduce maintenance costs and improve efficiencies, ensuring our products remain profitable Ensure that code is readable, maintainable, scalable, observable, and resilient Independently own and execute on projects within your squad Collaborate effectively with engineers across the team to deliver projects scale and integrate ML and AI features into the website, mobile app, and editorial tools Contribute to the design of components and systems and represent your thoughts in architecture reviews Be responsive to incidents and participate effectively in incident retrospectives Champion improvements to developer experience, integrations, and testing processes Support, coach, mentor, and provide valuable feedback to junior engineers on your squad Here is the approach we value: Author, review, and optimize production-quality code that adheres to industry standards and best practices (IaC, CICD, etc.) Demonstrate a passion for software engineering, with a strong sense of responsibility for the code you and your team write Take ownership of issues and be a strong advocate for your team and the products Embrace failure as a learning opportunity—use research and experimentation to ultimately choose the best solutions that meet company goals Follow a progressive development methodology, moving from proof-of-concept to prototype to production release Enhance the effectiveness of your squad, the team, and our partners by sharing your knowledge, communicating about complex technologies and problems in simple terms, and driving technical decisions Collaborate across functions, squads, teams, and organizations to best serve our users

Requirements

5+ years progressively complex experience designing, building, and shipping products
3+ years experience in data engineering roles or backend roles with a data focus
2+ years experience building data pipelines with IaC
2+ years experience with Python
2+ years experience in one of Golang, Java, C++
2+ years experience with Kafka or equivalent
Proficiency with Postgres or equivalent
Proficiency with DynamoDB or equivalent
Proficiency with Terraform or equivalent
Deep understanding of common software data structures and algorithms and experience in modern data engineering technologies and best practices
A proven track record of building real-time products for web scale that are highly available and performant
A collaborative mindset, understanding that great results come from teamwork and a positive culture

Nice To Haves

Experience with ML feature stores
Practical experience developing and maintaining ML data pipelines and tooling
Understanding of experimentation frameworks and A/B testing methodologies
Practical experience with recommendations, search and/or personalization

Responsibilities

Work closely with ML engineering to make data easily accessible and understandable
Ensure the reliability and minimize the latency of data delivery for ML use cases
Create transparency in our data pipelines with comprehensive telemetry
Develop and enforce data engineering, security, data quality standards through automation
Collaborate with other engineers to develop and enhance core capabilities, infrastructure, and architecture
Leverage vended and open-source cloud technologies to reduce maintenance costs and improve efficiencies, ensuring our products remain profitable
Ensure that code is readable, maintainable, scalable, observable, and resilient
Independently own and execute on projects within your squad
Collaborate effectively with engineers across the team to deliver projects scale and integrate ML and AI features into the website, mobile app, and editorial tools
Contribute to the design of components and systems and represent your thoughts in architecture reviews
Be responsive to incidents and participate effectively in incident retrospectives
Champion improvements to developer experience, integrations, and testing processes
Support, coach, mentor, and provide valuable feedback to junior engineers on your squad