Sr. Principal Data Scientist

This onsite, Atlanta-based opportunity offers a path to shape enterprise-scale AI and ML systems across Warner Bros. Discovery's streaming, advertising, and content platforms. You will influence technical direction, drive high-impact AI solutions, and collaborate with data engineering, platform, and product teams. Expect opportunities to mentor senior data scientists, contribute to internal AI communities, and elevate governance and responsible AI practices while operating within a cloud-first data ecosystem.

Responsibilities

• Serve as one of the company’s most senior technical individual contributors in data science and machine learning.
• Lead end-to-end design and deployment of advanced ML systems across content intelligence and metadata enrichment, audience modelling and personalization, forecasting, optimization and experimentation, and advertising intelligence and monetization analytics.
• Define technical direction and standards for complex ML implementations without direct people management responsibilities.
• Design and implement state-of-the-art models including large-scale recommender systems, time-series forecasting and probabilistic models, causal inference, experimentation and uplift modelling, NLP, generative AI and multimodal ML, plus computer vision and video intelligence pipelines.
• Apply rigorous statistical thinking, disciplined experimentation, and scientific validation to all solutions.
• Act as the final technical reviewer for high-risk or high-impact ML solutions.
• Architect production-grade ML systems integrated with Warner Bros. Discovery’s cloud data ecosystem (AWS, Snowflake, GCP).
• Define best practices for feature engineering and feature stores, model lifecycle management and MLOps, CI/CD for ML, model monitoring and drift detection, and reproducibility, governance, and responsible AI.
• Partner closely with data engineering, platform, and product engineering teams to ensure scalable and resilient delivery.
• Own and deliver mission-critical AI solutions across content performance prediction, ratings intelligence, marketing attribution and lifecycle analytics, search/discovery/ranking, ad load optimization and pricing intelligence, and operational forecasting and automation.
• Translate complex modelling outputs into clear, executive-ready insights that inform decision making.
• Serve as a trusted technical advisor to senior leaders across streaming, content, ad sales, marketing, and technology.
• Communicate complex ML concepts with clarity and credibility to non-technical stakeholders.
• Influence enterprise AI roadmaps, architectural decisions, and investment priorities through expertise and credibility.
• Mentor senior and staff-level data scientists through technical guidance, design reviews, and deep problem-solving.
• Contribute to internal AI communities of practice, technical forums, and standards bodies.
• Elevate overall engineering and scientific rigor across the Data Science organization.

Requirements

• Master’s or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science, Statistics, Mathematics, Operations Research, or related fields.
• 18–20 years of total experience, including 13–15 years in Data Science/ML with hands-on technical leadership.
• Proficiency in predictive modeling, optimization, and advanced ML techniques.
• MLOps expertise and experience deploying large-scale models.
• Strong familiarity with modern cloud ecosystems (AWS, GCP, Snowflake).
• Proficiency in Python, PyTorch, TensorFlow, SQL, and relevant ML frameworks.
• Experience in experiment design, causal inference, and statistical modeling.
• Demonstrated experience in Media & Entertainment, streaming, digital advertising, or consumer intelligence.
• Proven track record of delivering enterprise-impact through AI solutions.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to influence executives and inspire technical teams.

Technologies

• AWS
• Snowflake
• GCP
• Python
• PyTorch
• TensorFlow
• SQL