About the teamThis role sits on the Content Intelligence squad, which builds AI-generated data products from CNN's content using large language models - such as article summaries shown across CNN web and apps, and classification/tagging like brand-safety signals for advertising partners. These power both consumer-facing features and internal editorial workflows, serving millions of users. We build the production systems that run and serve these AI features reliably at scale.
Your Role Accountabilities...As a Senior Software Engineer, you will:
- Own features and production systems end-to-end, from design through operation, with growing influence on the team's technical direction
- Strive for operational excellence - build highly available, low-latency, efficient software (drop "with support from other engineers")
- Integrate large language models / foundational models into production with the right guardrails, monitoring, and evaluation - applying good judgment about what AI is and isn't reliable for
- Build and share subject-matter expertise across multiple production systems
- Author, test, review, and optimize production-quality code following IaC, version-control, and CD best practices (drop "with support")
- Take ownership of production reliability, including participation in an on-call rotation
- Mentor junior and mid-level engineers and help raise the bar on the team
- Communicate effectively through updates, demos, and technical documentation
- Promote an inclusive and supportive engineering culture
Qualifications & Experience... - 5+ years of professional software engineering experience
- Strong proficiency in Python, plus one or more of Golang, Java, C++, or similar
- Proven experience building and operating scalable backend/distributed systems in production at real scale (large user base; ~2-3 years at enterprise or large-scale-startup scale - not just POCs/prototypes)
- Hands-on experience shipping features or products built on LLMs / foundational models to real users (not demos)
- Experience with AWS (or comparable cloud), containerization, and CI/CD
- Bachelor's in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience
The Nice to Haves- Experience evaluating the quality of AI/LLM output and handling non-deterministic systems
- Experience with content classification, tagging, or summarization systems
- Prior experience on an ML/AI team
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.
