Sr. Staff Data Engineer, Data Platform, CNN Digital Products & Services

Warner Bros. Discovery•Washington, DC

21h

About The Position

CNN is seeking a Sr. Staff Data Engineer to serve as the technical authority for CNN’s Data Platform — the foundation that powers analytics, data science, machine learning, and AI across CNN’s digital products. You will define and execute the platform’s data strategy, architect the systems that transform raw event data into business-ready intelligence, and enable teams across CNN to build on a shared, reliable data ecosystem. Your work underpins everything from data-driven journalism and audience analytics to ad targeting and personalized content recommendations across CNN.com, the CNN mobile app, and connected TV experiences. This is a senior individual contributor role with organization-wide influence. You will set the architectural direction for CNN’s data platform, drive technical standards across multiple engineering teams, and mentor engineers up to Staff level. If you want to define how a global newsroom’s data infrastructure works — not just build features on it — this is the role.

Requirements

10+ years of software engineering experience with deep expertise in data engineering, data platform architecture, and large-scale data systems
7+ years of experience with cloud technology (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including data-specific services (e.g., EMR, Glue, S3, Athena, Redshift)
Strong expertise in data processing frameworks (Spark, Flink, or equivalent) and orchestration tools (Airflow, Dagster, or equivalent)
Experience with data modeling, ETL architecture, and designing schemas that serve diverse analytical and ML use cases
Strong programming experience across at least two of Java, Go, Python, and SQL
Previous experience working with Snowflake, Databricks, or other modern enterprise data warehouses
Demonstrated experience leading technical direction and setting engineering standards across multiple teams — not just executing, but defining how teams build

Nice To Haves

Experience working on end-to-end analytics pipelines from event collection to producing business-ready semantics
Deep familiarity with dbt or similar transformation frameworks
Experience with streaming and event-driven architectures (Kafka, Kinesis, Flink) at scale
Experience building or supporting AI/ML pipelines, feature stores, or model training infrastructure
Familiarity with data governance, data quality frameworks, and data cataloging tools
Experience in media, streaming, digital advertising, or consumer-facing products at scale

Responsibilities

Set the architectural direction for CNN’s Data Platform — own data modeling, schema design, and platform capabilities that serve Analytics, Data Science, ML, and AI teams
Architect and deliver scalable data pipelines for both real-time streaming and batch processing, from event collection through transformation to business-ready datasets
Enable cross-functional teams by defining data platform APIs, data contracts, and self-service capabilities that make it easy for engineers and analysts to build on the platform
Drive data quality and governance standards — establish frameworks for data validation, lineage tracking, and quality monitoring across the platform
Influence technical strategy across multiple engineering teams — contribute significantly to planning, prioritize strategic architecture investments, and drive alignment on platform direction
Mentor and provide growth-centered feedback to engineers up to Staff level through code reviews, design guidance, and architectural pairing
Communicate designs, architectural decisions, and technical tradeoffs clearly to engineers and leaders at all levels — represent the data platform domain with autonomy
Evangelize and oversee implementation of data engineering best practices — your code, documentation, and operational standards are the model others follow