Machine Learning Engineering Internship

Job Description

About Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology is at the forefront of reimagining entertainment experiences. They strive to create magical viewing experiences for beloved stories while transforming Disney’s media business for the future. Their work encompasses:

• Evolving streaming and digital products: Creating immersive and innovative experiences.
• Powering worldwide advertising and distribution: Maximizing flexibility and efficiency.
• Delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content: Reaching hundreds of millions of people globally.

Why you’d love working here:

• Building the future: Designing and building the infrastructure powering Disney’s media, advertising, and distribution businesses.
• Reach & Scale: Products and platforms delighting millions of consumers every day, including Disney+, Hulu, ABC News, ESPN, and ESPN+.
• Innovation: Developing groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms.

Machine Learning Engineering Internship

Dates: May/June 2025 through August/September 2025

Location: Santa Monica, CA or Seattle, WA

Team: This internship will be part of a team developing and maintaining recommendation and personalization algorithms for Disney Streaming apps, particularly Disney+ and Hulu.

Responsibilities:

• Algorithm Development & Maintenance:
• Utilize cutting-edge machine learning methods to build and implement algorithms for personalization, recommendation, and predictive systems.
• Maintain algorithms in production and explain methodologies to both technical and non-technical teams.
• Feature Engineering & Optimization:
• Develop and maintain ETL pipelines using tools like Airflow and Jenkins.
• Deploy scalable streaming and batch data pipelines for petabyte-scale datasets.
• Development Best Practices:
• Maintain existing and establish new standards for algorithm development, testing, and deployment.
• Collaboration with Stakeholders:
• Identify and define new personalization opportunities.
• Work with data teams to improve data collection, experimentation, and analysis.

Required Qualifications & Skills:

• Experience in developing machine learning models, large-scale data analysis, and/or data engineering.
• Proficiency in writing scalable code (e.g., Python, Scala).
• Understanding of modern machine learning methods, models, and their mathematical underpinnings.
• Experience deploying and maintaining pipelines (AWS, Docker, Airflow) and engineering big-data solutions (Databricks, S3, Spark).

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with AWS, Docker, Airflow, and Databricks.
• Experience building and deploying full-stack ML pipelines.
• Familiar with metadata management, data lineage, and data governance principles.
• Experience loading and querying cloud-hosted databases.
• Experience building streaming data pipelines using Kafka, Spark, or Flink.

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical/Electronics Engineering, or a comparable field.
• Enrolled in an accredited college/university taking at least one class in the semester/quarter prior to the internship and returning to school afterward.
• Junior or Senior year undergraduate students preferred.

Additional Information:

• Must be at least 18 years of age.
• Must not have completed one year of continual employment on a Disney internship or program.
• Must have unrestricted work authorization.
• Full availability Monday-Friday, 40 hours per week for the duration of the 12-week internship.
• Must be able to provide own housing in Santa Monica, CA or Seattle, WA.
• Must have reliable transportation to/from work.
• Pay rate: $40 per hour in Santa Monica, CA and Seattle, WA.
• Select benefits may be provided.