Director, Data Engineering

Director of Data Engineering

CNN is seeking a Director of Data Engineering to lead the design, development, and scaling of our next-generation data and AI platforms. This role sits at the intersection of journalism, subscriptions, advertising, and personalization, ensuring that our data ecosystem supports everything from award winning editorial storytelling to advanced targeting, and personalized intelligence. As a senior technical leader, you will lead a team to architect robust, secure, and scalable systems that enable:

• Data-driven journalism with real-time insights
• Business analytics supporting CNN's diverse operations
• Personalized user experience across CNN products
• Advertising, subscription, and other monetization strategies, including segmentation optimization and measurement
• AI/ML driven innovation advancing both editorial and business goals

This role is ideal for someone who thrives at the intersection of data engineering and platform architecture. The ideal candidate will be a strategic thinking, passionate people leader, and deeply experienced data engineer who can provide thought leadership to the team. This role will additionally provide leadership as we evolve our identity management solutions.

Your role accountabilities include:

• Strategic Leadership
• Define and execute the data platform strategy aligned with business objectives and newsroom priorities.
• Partner with product, analytics, and editorial teams to deliver actionable insights that drive engagement and revenue.
• Platform Architecture & Scalability
• Architect and maintain a modern, cloud-native data platform capable of handling high-volume, real-time data streams.
• Ensure scalability, reliability, and security of data systems to support millions of users and diverse content types.
• Analytics Enablement
• Partner closely with analytic environment users to define, build, and optimize pipelines for advanced analytics, machine learning, and audience segmentation.
• Enable self-service analytics tools for internal stakeholders to democratize data access.
• Team Leadership & Development
• Lead and develop a team of data engineers, platform architects, and DevOps specialists.
• Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Governance & Compliance
• Implement best practices for data governance, privacy, and compliance with industry regulations.
• Ensure data quality and integrity across all systems.

Qualifications include:

• 10+ years in software/data engineering, with 5+ years in leadership roles.
• Proven track record of building and scaling data platforms in high-traffic environments (media, e-commerce, or similar).
• Deep knowledge of distributed systems, cloud platforms (AWS preferred), and big data technologies (Spark, Kafka, Snowflake, etc.).
• Strong understanding of data modeling and ETL tools such as dbt.
• Experience with building real-time data pipelines and building environments for near real time personalization and ads.
• Strong software engineering background for building robust software deployed across multiple systems.
• Exceptional ability to lead cross-functional teams and communicate technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.

Nice to haves include:

• Experience in news/media or content-driven organizations.
• Familiarity with audience analytics, personalization, and advertising technologies.
• Experience with identity management

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.