VP, Engineering - Personalization & Recommendations

About the Team

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we’re reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world’s most beloved stories while also transforming Disney’s media business for the future. Whether that’s evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

What You Will Do

The Product & Data Engineering team is responsible for end-to-end development for Disney’s world-class consumer-facing products, including streaming platforms Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+, and digital products & experiences across ESPN, Marvel, Disney Studios, NatGeo, and ABC News. The team drives innovation at scale for hundreds of millions of consumers around the world across Apple, Android, Smart TVs, game consoles, and the web, with our platforms powering core experiences like personalization, search, messaging and data.

The Engagement Experiences & Platforms (EEP) Org is responsible for building the backend platforms and experiences that drive Engagement for our global consumer base. 

In this executive role, you will leverage your expertise in Data Science to set the strategy and vision for our Personalization & Algorithms, creating the best-in-class Recommendations & Discovery experiences for hundreds of millions of customers on Disney+, Hulu, ESPN and ABC.

You will lead and guide data science and engineering teams spanning algorithm and ML model development, data engineering, and large-scale systems engineering to deliver innovative experiences that lead to consumer engagement and delight for our global customer base.

You will partner cross-functionally with Product Managers, Analytics, Content, Business & Legal teams to understand our customers, our content, and our ecosystem to shape our strategy and define what success looks like.

• Understand & analyze engagement metrics, our customer needs, and our content to shape and set strategy/roadmap in collaboration with Product.  

• Drive execution of the roadmap.

• Follow industry/contemporary AI & ML technology and propose an agenda for application of relevant science & technology for our use cases.

• Coach leaders, guide & shape the organization to foster a culture of learning, collaboration & innovation.

• Evangelize, showcase and present the work being done by the team to technical and non-technical audiences.

Required Qualifications & Skills

• 14+ years of relevant professional experience.

• 10+ years of experience leading and directing strategy for teams of data scientists, data engineers and/or engineers.

• Ability to dive deep into individual components & algorithms, as well as understand the overall framework/architecture.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, ability to simplify and synthesize complex constructs.

• Developing algorithms and machine learned models for consumer experiences.

• Data Science, Data Engineering Practices & Software Development Lifecycle.

• Engineering, deploying & operating algorithms & machine learned models for consumer experiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in the Analytics function.

• Experience with Large Language Models (LLMs) & Generative AI.

• Experience with consumer facing products operating at global scale.

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical, or Electronics Engineer, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience.

• Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software or comparable field of study is Preferred