Senior Manager, Machine Learning

Job ID 10142466 Location Bengaluru, India Business Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology Date posted Feb. 06, 2026

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Job Summary:

Senior Manager, Machine Learning

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology

Technology is at the heart of Disney’s past, present, and future. Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is a global organization of engineers, product developers, designers, technologists, data scientists, and more – all working to build and advance the technological backbone for Disney’s media business globally.

The team marries technology with creativity to build world-class products, enhance storytelling, and drive velocity, innovation, and scalability for our businesses. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers. We work with every part of The Walt Disney Company’s media portfolio to advance the technological foundation and consumer media touch points serving millions of people around the world.

Here are a few reasons why we think you’d love working here:

Building the future of Disney’s media: Our Technologists are designing and building the products and platforms that will power our media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.
Reach, Scale & Impact: More than ever, Disney’s technology and products serve as a signature doorway for fans' connections with the company’s brands and stories. Disney+. Hulu. ESPN. ABC. ABC News…and many more. These products and brands – and the unmatched stories, storytellers, and events they carry – matter to millions of people globally.
Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms, and solve complex and distinctive technical problems.

Ad Platforms Machine Learning

Ad Platform builds Disney’s industry-leading advertising technology, supporting sports, news, and entertainment content across all major media platforms. Our systems handle high-scale, high-throughput, revenue-critical workloads.

Our mission is to advance machine learning capabilities across Ad Platform by delivering scalable, high impact ML and data science solutions that enhance various aspects of ad serving. We are seeking a Sr Manager, Machine Learning to join this innovative team. This role offers a unique leadership opportunity for an experienced ML and people leader who thrives at the intersection of technical excellence, strategic impact, and cross-functional collaboration.

This is a hands-on technical leadership position, ideal for leaders who enjoy staying close to architecture, design, and machine learning models—while managing engineers and managers; and building strong engineering organizations. You will apply your battle-tested experience, deep technical knowledge of software and systems including Machine Learning and AI technologies, and leadership skills to unblock and guide our ML and data science team members. You’ll guide teams to design and build scalable, performant, maintainable, and testable models and pipelines in various domains using industry best practices which are aligned in close collaboration with the ML team in the US highlighting cross-functional collaboration. You’ll work with product teams to translate requirements into well-defined technical implementations, as well as define technical and operational metrics to measure system health.

What You’ll Do

Hire and Lead Team: Lead, mentor and guide Data Scientists, Machine Learning and AI engineers to build solutions adhering to industry best practices and deliver scalable solutions including model architecture and algorithm selection
Lead and deliver complex, high-impact projects: Lead by example and always strive to improve the design for more scalable, cleaner, and decoupled implementations. Oversee end-2-end machine learning workflow, including data collection, model development, deployment and modeling. These are expected to be aligned with the larger platform strategy and tools in collaboration with the US teams to stay consistent across Ad Platforms
Improve productivity: Drive adoption of best practices in model development, code quality, testing, and documentation
Embrace next-gen technology: Solid understanding and usage of automated tools (AI) while adhering to company policy. Define strategic direction for machine learning projects and collaborate with product and engineering stakeholders
Global Collaboration & Alignment: Serve as technical leader and partner with leaders across engineering, data, and operations worldwide; across time-zones; Communicate strategies, progress, and results to leadership and cross-functional teams. Develop partnerships across the organization to identify and prioritize high-impact ML opportunities
Innovate for customers: Foster innovation by exploring new ML techniques, tools, and technologies
Technical and Operational Excellence: Available for On-Call rotations based on the team’s escalation policy and support schedule for ML/AI solutions
Responsible usage of AI: Ensure responsible AI practices, including fairness, explainability, and compliance with privacy and ethical standards

What makes this role unique

Global impact from India: You’ll be part of Disney India innovation hub and work with talented builders creating impact on customers across geography. You will lead platforms that power global products like Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, and ABC—used by millions of people worldwide
Strong ownership: Disney India is a core engineering hub. Ad Platform leaders have complete ownership and autonomy of architecture, delivery, and people development
Leadership Development: Build and mentor senior engineers and managers, shaping the future of Disney’s engineering leadership in India
Work-Life Harmony: Disney India values work-life harmony. We provide flexibility as part of work culture, including flexible workdays and hours

Basic Qualifications

Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, Engineering, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related field
10+ years of relevant industry experience, with at least 3 years in a people-management or technical leadership role
Proven ability to translate business problems into scalable ML and GenAI solutions and strong understanding of machine learning fundamentals, deep learning, and statistical modeling
Proven experience designing, building, and deploying scalable machine learning models and systems in production
Experience deploying ML/GenAI systems at scale using cloud platforms and MLOps practices
Advanced programming proficiency (e.g., Python, Java, or similar); experience with ML/DL frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch, JAX, Hugging Face)
Experience building, fine-tuning, evaluating, and deploying LLM-based systems (e.g., RAG, prompt engineering, model optimization)
Demonstrated ability to lead global teams and collaborate across organizational boundaries

Preferred Qualifications

Domain knowledge in the Ad Tech industry
Experience working with large-scale data and distributed systems.
Knowledge of cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure) and MLOps pipelines.
Track record of innovation and contributions to the ML/AI community (publications, talks, open source)
Demonstrated success in cross-functional leadership within large, global, or matrixed organizations
Strong curiosity and alignment with Disney’s mission, with a passion for delivering innovative, resilient, and developer-friendly platforms

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About Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology:

At Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology, we’re blending imagination and innovation to reimagine the ways people experience and engage with the world’s most beloved stories and products. Our work is wide-ranging and deeply sophisticated. We create amazing experiences, transform the future of media, and build products and platforms that enable the connection between people everywhere and the stories and sports they love.

Disney’s ability to marry world-class technology with one-of-a-kind creativity makes us unique. It is at the heart of our past, present, and future. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers.

About The Walt Disney Company:

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise that includes three core business segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Experiences. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family. Disney’s stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.

This position is with Disney (India) Private Limited, which is part of a business we call Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology.

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The Walt Disney Company entertains, informs and inspires people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds and innovative technologies that make ours the world’s premier entertainment company.