Staff Engineer

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:

The Staff Engineer reports to the Director, Engineering. This position is accountable for designing and delivering scalable, cloud-native solutions that power our advertising technology stack that support thousands of users and billions of ad impressions monthly as well as works on the transformation of legacy broadcast and scheduling workflows into scalable, cloud-native systems that enable automation, efficiency, and interoperability across sales, operations, and distribution. This role defines engineering best practices, mentors peers, and ensures mission-critical platforms are reliable, performant, and cloud-optimized for scale.

Your Role Accountabilities

1. System Architecture & Technical Leadership

• Define and evolve the architecture of large-scale, distributed AdTech systems handling billions of events and real-time decisioning.
• Lead design of highly available (99.99%+), fault-tolerant systems with strong observability and operability.
• Drive engineering standards for scalability, performance, and cost efficiency across teams.

2. API-First Platform Engineering

• Design and build API-first, cloud-native platforms enabling seamless interoperability across planning, trafficking, delivery, and measurement systems.
• Establish best practices for contract design, versioning, and backward compatibility at scale.
• Enable real-time data exchange across internal systems and external AdTech partners.

3. Platform Modernization  

• Lead transformation of legacy broadcast and scheduling systems into modular, event-driven, cloud-native architectures.
• Decompose monoliths into microservices and streaming-based systems.
• Drive convergence of linear and digital advertising workflows into a unified platform.

4. Data & Real-Time Processing

• Architect and implement high-throughput data pipelines for forecasting, yield optimization, and performance analytics.
• Build systems leveraging streaming (Kafka) and batch (Spark) for near real-time insights.
• Ensure data correctness, lineage, and scalability across petabyte-scale datasets.

5. Cross-Team Influence & Execution

• Partner with Product, Data Science, and Operations to translate ambiguous business problems into scalable technical solutions.
• Influence multiple teams without direct authority; drive alignment on architecture and priorities.
• Act as a technical escalation point for complex, high-impact problems.

6. Engineering Excellence & Mentorship

• Raise the engineering bar through design reviews, code quality, and operational rigor.
• Mentor senior and junior engineers; grow future technical leaders.
• Champion a culture of ownership, simplicity, and continuous improvement.

Qualifications & Experience

Core Engineering Expertise

• 8–12 years of experience building large-scale distributed systems.
• Proven track record of designing systems operating at high scale (billions of transactions/events).
• Strong hands-on expertise in Java / Scala / Python.

Cloud & Distributed Systems

• Deep experience with cloud-native architectures (AWS/GCP/Azure).
• Strong understanding of microservices, event-driven systems, and distributed system design trade-offs.
• Expertise in SQL + NoSQL data stores and system design for high throughput.

Data & Streaming

• Hands-on experience with Kafka, Spark, or equivalent streaming/big data frameworks.
• Strong grasp of real-time processing, ETL pipelines, and data modeling at scale.

AdTech & Domain Knowledge  

• Strong understanding of AdTech ecosystem: forecasting, yield optimization, identity, campaign lifecycle.
• Experience with linear TV systems (planning, scheduling, trafficking) and their modernization into digital platforms is a major plus.
• Exposure to converged advertising (linear + digital) is highly desirable.

Leadership & Influence

• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence
• Experience driving cross-team architectural initiatives.
• Strong communication skills with ability to engage both technical and business stakeholders.

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, regardless of sex, gender identity, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, marital status, pregnancy, parenthood, disability 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.