Senior Staff Data Engineer
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.
Warner Bros. has been entertaining audiences for more than 90 years through the world's most-loved characters and franchises. Warner Bros. employs people all over the world in a wide variety of disciplines. We're always on the lookout for energetic, creative people to join our team.
Your New Role...
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We are seeking an exceptional Senior Staff Data Engineer to lead the design, development, and scaling of the data and platform systems that power our experimentation, adaptive optimisation, and automated decisioning ecosystem. This is a high-impact, hands-on technical leadership role that will shape how experimentation data is collected, processed, served, and operationalised across millions of users worldwide.
This role will act as a force multiplier for all Labs initiatives and, in particular, will support the development and productionization of the new Canvas Optimisation system.
As a senior technical leader, you will define the architecture and long-term strategy for experimentation data infrastructure, ensure reliable and cost-efficient data pipelines, and partner closely with Data Science, Engineering, Product, and Analytics teams to scale our platform from hundreds to thousands of concurrent experiments and bandits.
This role would be tasked with reducing Labs data processing costs by ~25% over the year through architectural optimisation, storage strategy improvements, compute efficiency, and intelligent data lifecycle management.
Your Role Accountabilities...
Scale Experimentation Data Platforms
- Architect and lead the design of scalable, reliable data pipelines supporting large-scale A/B testing, multivariate testing, and adaptive experimentation.
- Build and maintain systems that support real-time and batch experiment telemetry ingestion, feature logging, exposure tracking, and outcome measurement.
- Design data models and storage strategies optimised for:
- Experiment analysis latency
- Cost efficiency
- Long-term reproducibility
- Governance and auditability
- Enable production-grade pipelines for statistical methods such as CUPED, regression adjustment, and other variance-reduction workflows (in partnership with Data Science).
Enable Adaptive & Bandit Systems at Scale
- Build data infrastructure that supports multi-armed bandit decisioning systems, including:
- Low-latency reward signal pipelines
- Feature and context streaming
- Policy logging and replay data stores
- Partner with scientists to productionize bandit frameworks (e.g., Thompson Sampling, epsilon-greedy, UCB) via reliable data services and APIs.
- Design systems enabling off-policy evaluation (OPE), replay simulation datasets, and long-term policy evaluation storage.
Canvas Optimization & Personalization Infrastructure
- Lead data system architecture supporting the Canvas Optimisation platform, including:
- Artwork / creative performance telemetry
- Impression → engagement attribution pipelines
- Near real-time reward computation
- Global rollout observability and monitoring
- Ensure high availability, correctness, and explainability of decisioning-support data feeds.
Cost Optimisation & Efficiency Leadership
- Drive initiatives to reduce overall Labs data processing costs by ~25%, including:
- Query and job optimisation across compute platforms (Databricks, Spark, etc.)
- Storage tiering and retention policy optimisation
- Data compaction, partitioning, and indexing strategies
- Eliminating redundant or low-value pipeline stages
- Establish cost observability dashboards and cost-to-value monitoring frameworks.
Platform, Reliability & Developer Experience
- Build reusable data services, libraries, and APIs that:
- Simplify experiment onboarding
- Standardize telemetry schemas
- Enable self-service data access
- Define and enforce SLAs for critical experimentation and decisioning datasets.
- Lead data quality frameworks including anomaly detection, reconciliation, and automated validation.
Technical Leadership & Mentorship
- Serve as a technical thought leader across data platform architecture for experimentation and optimization.
- Mentor data engineers and platform engineers on distributed systems design, pipeline reliability, and performance optimization.
- Influence cross-org roadmaps spanning experimentation science, platform engineering, and product personalization systems.
Qualifications and Experience...
- BS/MS in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field (or equivalent industry experience).
- 10+ years building and operating large-scale distributed data systems.
- Deep experience with:
- Streaming and batch data architectures
- Experiment telemetry systems
- Data modelling for analytics and decisioning
- Hands-on experience with modern data stack technologies (e.g., Spark, Airflow, Redshift, Databricks, Snowflake, Delta Lake, etc.).
- Strong programming mindset with a focus on building and enforcing standards that ensure code is maintainable, readable, and extensible over time.
- Strong communication skills and ability to partner across DS, Engineering, Product, and Analytics.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience supporting experimentation or personalisation platforms at scale.
- Familiarity with adaptive experimentation and bandit system data requirements.
- Experience with cost optimisation of large-scale cloud data platforms.
- Experience operating global, multi-region data systems.
Hybrid Working - This role is advertised as a Hybrid work model, that combines remote and in-office work, following our current company policy and to be agreed with your Line Manager. Subject to any applicable laws, WBD / your Line Manager reserves the right to change this working agreement where this is essential to business needs and upon reasonable notice to you.
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, regardless of sex, gender identity, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, marital status, pregnancy, parenthood, disability 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.
Perks and Benefits
Health and Wellness
- Health Insurance
- Dental Insurance
- Vision Insurance
- Life Insurance
- Short-Term Disability
- Long-Term Disability
- FSA With Employer Contribution
- HSA
- HSA With Employer Contribution
- Fitness Subsidies
- On-Site Gym
- FSA
- Mental Health Benefits
- Virtual Fitness Classes
Parental Benefits
- Birth Parent or Maternity Leave
- Non-Birth Parent or Paternity Leave
- Adoption Leave
- Fertility Benefits
- Adoption Assistance Program
- Family Support Resources
- On-site/Nearby Childcare
Work Flexibility
- Flexible Work Hours
- Hybrid Work Opportunities
Office Life and Perks
- Commuter Benefits Program
- Casual Dress
- Happy Hours
- Company Outings
- Snacks
- On-Site Cafeteria
- Holiday Events
Vacation and Time Off
- Paid Vacation
- Paid Holidays
- Personal/Sick Days
- Leave of Absence
- Unlimited Paid Time Off
- Sabbatical
- Volunteer Time Off
- Summer Fridays
Financial and Retirement
- 401(K) With Company Matching
- Company Equity
- Stock Purchase Program
- Performance Bonus
- Relocation Assistance
- Financial Counseling
- 401(K)
- Profit Sharing
Professional Development
- Tuition Reimbursement
- Promote From Within
- Mentor Program
- Shadowing Opportunities
- Lunch and Learns
- Internship Program
- Work Visa Sponsorship
- Leadership Training Program
- Associate or Rotational Training Program
- Learning and Development Stipend
- Access to Online Courses
- Professional Coaching
Diversity and Inclusion
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Program
- Employee Resource Groups (ERG)