Manager, Software Engineering

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 the Engineering Manager for our platform squad, you will manage 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 Generative AI: As generative AI tools like Bedrock emerge, enhance our platform to support them, ensuring we’re prepared for the next generation of AI-powered applications
• Democratize AI at CNN: Expand our developer tools and create an intuitive, safe environment for non-experts to build with AI

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

• Support, coach, mentor, and provide valuable feedback to the individuals you manage to help them excel
• Work with cross-functional partners and stakeholders on activities such as planning, technical strategy, quality and delivery
• Partner with engineers within the team and across the organization to scale and integrate ML and AI features into the website, mobile app, and editorial tools
• Lead other engineers on the team by example, code reviews, and coaching, ensuring that code is readable, maintainable, scalable, observable, and resilient
• Champion improvements to developer experience, integrations, and testing processes
• Leverage vended and open-source cloud technologies to reduce maintenance costs and improve efficiencies, ensuring our products remain profitable
• Collaborate with other engineers to develop and enhance core capabilities, infrastructure, and architecture

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

The Essentials

We’re looking for someone with:

• 8+ years progressively complex experience designing, building, and shipping products
• 3+ years backend development experience with data-heavy applications
• 3+ experience with IaC, deployment pipelines, and relational databases
• 3+ years experience managing engineering teams
• Deep understanding of common software data structures and algorithms, with extensive experience in modern development technologies and practices
• A proven track record of building web scale products that are highly available and performant
• Passion for growing engineers through mentorship, talent acquisition, and professional development
• A collaborative mindset, understanding that great results come from teamwork and a positive culture
• Proven success leading complex projects within an engineering team: knowing when to handle issues independently, when to rally the right people for alignment, and when to escalate
• Excellent communication, presentation, and documentation skills

The Nice to Haves

• Experience designing and implementing ML solutions in production environments
• Practical experience developing and maintaining MLOps pipelines and tooling
• Experience with RAG pipelines, feature stores, or embedding infrastructure
• Understanding of experimentation frameworks and A/B testing methodologies
• Practical experience with recommendations, search and/or personalization

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.