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.

Your New Role…

CNN is seeking a Director of Engineering to lead its Data Platform. This leader will define and execute the platform’s data strategy, supporting teams across Analytics, Data Science, Machine Learning, and AI. The role includes overseeing the design, development, and scaling of Data Platform capabilities that power journalism, advertising, personalization, and more. The platform supports CNN’s data ecosystem from award‑winning editorial storytelling to advanced ad targeting and personalized recommendations.  

As a senior engineering leader, you will hire, lead, and develop the Data Platform team.  Additionally, you will partner with product and engineering groups across CNN to architect and deliver robust, scalable, and secure Data Platform capabilities. This platform enables data‑driven journalism, business analytics, personalized recommendations, and ad targeting. You will champion proven engineering practices while driving innovation to unlock advanced analytics and AI/ML opportunities.  

This role is ideal for someone who thrives in a fast‑paced engineering culture; builds systems that meet diverse stakeholder needs; and fosters strong cross‑team relationships. We are looking for a leader with deep expertise in data engineering and data platform infrastructure to guide the future of CNN’s data platform.  

Your Role Accountabilities…

Strategic Leadership  

• Define and drive the execution of the CNN data strategy that supports all teams leveraging the Data Platform in achieving their goals  
• Align Data Platform initiatives with broader business and newsroom priorities to maintain and further extend CNN’s data driven culture  
• Collaborate and create consensus with engineering leaders across CNN to ensure timely delivery of high impact data products and governance features  
• Partner with product, analytics, and editorial leadership to deliver Data Platform capabilities that enable analytic insights which drive engagement and revenue features in addition to business decisions  

Engineering Excellence & Platform Architecture  

• Support the architectural development of the CNN Data Platform which is responsible for processing high volumes of batch and near real time data  
• Create consensus amongst Data Platform teams on the selection of technologies that effectively and economically support the Data Platform architecture  
• Lead Data Platform teams responsible for building and optimizing ETL pipelines that transform all ingested data into metrics and signals that are easily leveraged by all analytics, AI and ML teams  

Operational Excellence  

• Guide the teams to monitor and maintain data quality, ensuring that all teams on the Data Platform can trust its data  
• Build stable Data Platform capabilities and pipelines that are aligned with CNN’s SDLC and do not compromise any data products built on it  
• Ensure governance, privacy and compliance standards are met by teams maintaining the Data Platform   
• Accountable for data processing budgets and Data Platform costs for all teams  

Team Leadership & Development  

• Recruit and develop talent for rapidly growing data and platform engineering teams  
• Guide the next generation of engineering leaders on CNN Data Platform teams  
• Foster an inclusive culture of innovation, collaboration, strong ownership, and continuous improvement  

Qualifications and Skills...

• 10+ years in software/data engineering, with at least 5 years in leadership roles.  
• Proven track record of building, scaling and supporting Data Platforms for high traffic Web applications. Media, streaming, e-commerce, or similar preferred  
• Experience leading and setting priorities for large, multi-disciplinary engineering teams   
• Deep knowledge of the technologies and system architectures to support both backend cloud based distributed systems as well as front end client SDKs for client event collection  
• 5+ years of experience in designing, building, and leading teams that maintain large‑scale ETL pipelines that support big‑data processing for both near real‑time and batch data set, including expertise in data modeling, metadata curation, and modern big data technologies such as Spark, Flink, Snowflake, Databricks, Trino, and Iceberg  
• Strong software engineering background that can support architectural and engineering decisions across CNN Data Platform teams in addition to setting and enforcing engineering best practices  
• Experience in defining data strategies that include data governance and compliance standards as well as familiarity with setting, documenting and enforcing that strategy in engineer artifacts and standards in policy documents  
• Exceptional written language and communication skills to set clear expectations and create consensus with leaders, teams and engineers  
• Experience in news/media or content-driven organizations  
• Familiarity with audience analytics, personalization, and advertising technologies  

  

  

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.