Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Personalization & Content Discovery

Welcome to Warner Bros. Discovery

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.

At HBO Max, storytelling takes center stage. We’re one of the world’s most iconic entertainment brands — home to bold originals and unforgettable characters. While audiences binge award-winning content, breaking news, and sports around the clock, our teams stay busy at work creating what’s next in streaming. From Succession, Euphoria, and The Sopranos to global franchises like Game of Thrones and Harry Potter, our content sparks conversation and shapes culture.

HBO Max delivers boundary-pushing stories across genres and platforms, connecting millions of viewers across 90 countries globally— and we’re just getting started. We're home to the most talked about shows and movies, granting audiences access to the worlds of HBO, Harry Potter, DC, Warner Bros., ID, Adult Swim, A24, and more. Turn your streaming obsession into a career— we’re hiring!

Warner Bros. Discovery is a premier global media and entertainment company offering audiences the world's most differentiated and complete portfolio of content, brands and franchises across television, film, sports, news, streaming and gaming. Our mission is simple. To be the world's best storytellers with world-class products for consumers. From brilliant creatives to technology trailblazers and beyond, join us as we step into the next chapter.

Warner Bros. Discovery's DTC technology and product organization sits at the intersection of tech, entertainment, and everyday utility. We are continuously leveraging new technology to build immersive and interactive viewing experiences. Our platform covers everything from search, content catalog, video transcoding, to personalization, global subscriptions, and more. We are committed to delivering unique and quality user experiences, ranging from video streaming to applications across connected TV, mobile, web and consoles. As a pure tech organization, we are essential to Warner Bros. Discovery’s continued growth, building world-class streaming products from the ground-up for our iconic brands like HBO Max, Discovery Channel, CNN, Food Network, HGTV, Eurosport, MotorTrend, and many more.

About the Role: Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Personalization & Content Discovery

We are looking for a passionate Machine Learning Engineer to build and scale the DTC personalization models and algorithms for our new global streaming app, Max, as well as any future DTC streaming apps. You are excited about working in an environment that fosters innovation via prototyping, development, experimentation, and productionization. You will bring the right balance between rapid feature iteration and building a common set of platforms and tools to move quickly in the future. In your role, you will be working alongside a team of passionate machine learning engineers and applied Machine Learning researchers to build and contribute to architecting a system that serves millions of users worldwide.

Responsibilities

• Architect, build and scale a recommendation system that powers the state-of-the-art personalization experience to users across Max, HBO, Discovery+ and other WBD offerings
• Collaborate with ML/Ops engineers to develop and improve core components, infrastructure and architecture to train, deploy and serve models at scale
• Collaborate with other data scientists, engineers, product teams and other key stakeholders and drive ML projects from conception to completion
• Author, test, review, and optimize production-level code in Python, Go and Java while executing best practices in version control and code integration
• Use and build upon open-source cloud computing technologies
• Participate and support engineering leaders in strategic planning and demonstrate good judgment in setting and delivering against strategic goals for the team
• Motivate, inspire and create a culture of experimentation and data-driven innovation while constantly striving to be an advocate for doing what is right for our customers

Requirements

• 8+ years of industry experience, with 4+ years as tech lead experience (preferred)
• Deep practical knowledge of modern machine learning lifecycle. Deep practical knowledge of large-scale recommender systems, or large-scale ML ranking/retrieval/targeting systems and familiarity with A/B Tests and hypothesis testing is preferred
• Experience with design, implementation, and performance tuning of ML models.
• 5+ years of programming experience in at least one of the following: Python/Java/Go with ability to rapidly prototype ideas and refine towards production.
• Deep practical knowledge of large-scale recommender models and systems, or large-scale ML ranking/retrieval/targeting systems.
• Experience with one of the cloud platforms AWS/GCP/Azure
• Good practical knowledge of SQL and relational databases.
• Experience with CI/CD tools like GitHub Actions, Jenkins, etc.
• Excellent written and verbal communications skills, be comfortable presenting to large audiences.
• Advanced degree (M.S.), or equivalent industry experience in statistics, computer science, machine learning or related fields

Additional Information

On December 5, Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Netflix will acquire Warner Bros., including its film and television studios, HBO Max and HBO. The transaction is expected to close after the separation of Warner Bros. Discovery's Global Networks division, Discovery Global, into a new publicly-traded company, which is expected to be completed in Q3 2026. For more details, including leadership appointments and information on individual brands, please visit our newsroom here.Although you will be hired by Warner Bros. Discovery, upon the planned spin-off of Discovery Global in 2026, your employment likely will transition to Warner Bros. During this period of transformation, you’ll have an exciting opportunity to lay the foundation at one of the world’s premier entertainment brands.

Key skills/competency

• Machine Learning
• Personalization
• Recommendation Systems
• Content Discovery
• Python
• Java
• Go
• Cloud Platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure)
• SQL
• CI/CD