Job Description

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.

Who We Are...

We are CNN. THE WORLD'S MOST ESSENTIAL AND ENGAGING SOURCE OF DIGITAL NEWS. We arein the midst ofrapid transformation and need our next generation of innovators, makers, and dreamers who will lead and drive our growth. We aim to make the world a better, more connected place.

About the Team

With deep domain expertise, advanced technical capabilities, and a proven track record of successful collaborations, the ML & AIteam at CNN is accelerating our digital transformation through strategic applications of ML and AI technologies, applying optimization to everything fromcontent recommendationstoadsales to subscription growth—serving millions of CNN users via web and mobile apps.

Your New Role...

The Director, ML / AIleads this technical and people agenda: you set direction for ML and AI across CNN’s digital products, align roadmaps withengineering,analytics,product, and editorial partners, and ensure that what we ship is measurable, reliable, and worthy of a global news brand.

Your Role Accountabilities...

Youwillbe responsible forensuring excellentML/AImethods forCNN’s consumer and editorial surfaces:a coherent portfolio across personalization, search, recommendations, content understanding, and responsible use of generative AI and foundational models. You combine peopleleadershipwith credible technical judgment you build and developmachine learningengineers, set cross-team priorities, and stay hands-on enough to arbitrate architecture and modeling decisions when it matters.

Here are some of the strategic priorities you will drive:

• ML and AI thought leadership Partner with product and editorial teams todevelopnew uses for machine learning and AI tools across CNN’s internal and customer-facing environments.

• Platform and data partnership:Co-own roadmaps with data engineering and analytics so instrumentation, pipelines, feature paths, telemetry, and data quality keep pace with ML—without excellent data and platform partnership, ML leadership cannot succeed.

• Experimentation at scale:Champion rigorous testing,and machine-learned targeting, incoordinationwith Data & Analytics, and clear decision rights so we learn fast without shipping confusion.

• Performance and scale:Ensure ML-powered experiences work within real-time and web-scaleconstraints—alongside caching, edge delivery, and high availability for millions of users.

• Sustainability:Balance innovation with maintainability and cost—leverage cloud and open-source capabilities responsibly

Here are some of the things you can expect to do on a day-to-day basis:

• Lead, hire, and develop machine learning engineers; foster an inclusive culturethat provides career growth and guidance for MLEs at all levels while pushing the boundaries on new methodologiesandtechnologies

• Partner with product and analytical teams to pioneer new uses of ML andoptimizeexisting use cases.

• Own the ML systems roadmap with platform, data, andproductleadership; size opportunities, prioritize capabilities, and secure alignment and resourcing with senior stakeholders.

• Partner with platform, infrastructure, and ML platformteams on training, serving, feature pipelines, and operational needs for personalization and search.

• Partner with downstream application teamson stable interfaces between ML capabilities and the website, mobile apps, and editorial tools.

• Guidedesignand delivery of ML in production monitoring, validation, iteration based on live impact—not offline metrics alone.

• Represent ML/AI clearly to editorial and businessaudiences; translate goals into investments and non-negotiables (trust, corrections, safety).

• Respond to incidents and learning cycles at the organizational level; champion improvements to developer experience, integrations, and testing.

Here is the approach we value:

• Author, review, and optimize production-quality code and systems that adhere to industry standards and best practices

• Demonstrate passion for software and ML engineering, witha strong senseof responsibility for what you and your team ship.

• Take ownership of issues and advocate for your team and products; embrace failure as a learning opportunity and use research and experimentation to choose solutions that meet company goals.

• Follow a progressive developmentmethodology—proof-of-conceptto prototypeto production—with measurable milestones.

• Enhance the effectiveness of your team and partners by sharing knowledge, explaining complex technologies in simple terms, and driving sound technical decisions.

• Collaborate across functions, squads, teams, and organizations to best serve our users.

Qualifications & Experience...

• Advanced degree (Master’sor PhD) in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Information Science, Engineering, or another quantitative discipline—or equivalent depthfrom industry experience. PhDs and research-heavy backgrounds are welcome.

• 8+ yearsof professional experience building machine learning and data-science-driven systemswith a proven record of innovation and measurable product or business impact. (Candidates with a PhDmay qualify with 6+ yearsof strong industry experience post-degree if the depth is equivalent.)

• 5+ yearsdeveloping and deploying AI/ML systems across the full lifecycle—ideation, proof of concept, deployment, monitoring, and iteration—in Python

• Demonstrated technical leadership a sustained record of leading multi-engineer initiatives, setting technical direction for ML systems, mentoring senior engineers, and partnering across product and platform—through people management, staff/principal-level scope, or an equivalent combination Formal people-management experience is valued but not strictlyrequiredfor candidates with an exceptional senior or staff MLtrack recordwho are ready to step into a director role.

• Experience deploying complex, large-scalemachine learning systems in production; practical familiarity with ML modeling and the operational realities of live models.

• Strong communicationskills and the ability to build trusted partnerships across functions in a fast-paced, high-energy environment.

The Nice to Haves...

• Experience from large-scale consumer internetenvironments—social, streaming, marketplaces, or similar—where ranking, retrieval, recommendations, or searchoperateunder latency, safety, and experimentation constraints.

• Experience with recommendation, search, or ad-servingalgorithms and systems; NLP, information retrieval, or related areas.

• Familiarity with data pipelines, feature stores, embedding infrastructure, or large-scale feature serving.

• Deep familiarity with experimentation frameworksand A/B testing methodologies.

• Interest in media, publishing, or news; commitment to responsible AIand high-trust content experiences.

• Exposure to generative AIin product settings—guardrails, evaluation, latency and cost tradeoffs, human-in-the-loop workflows.

• Experience with Agiledelivery practices.

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: $234,500.00 - $435,500.00 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.