AI Engineering Technical Lead

Storytelling is, and will always be, the heart of what we do at Skydance.
Our vision is to build a thriving entertainment ecosystem where stories and worlds are imagined, brought to life and experienced. We create for every age and audience, anchored by the strength of our content and experiences and the depth of our connection with fans. We are creator-first, audience-focused, tech-forward, globally scaled.

Here, you’ll work with talented teams that move fast, think boldly and collaborate with purpose to deliver results. We aim high, champion the best ideas and win together, earning the trust of our employees, creators, partners and audiences every day.

If you’re energized by the opportunity to help build the next-generation global media and entertainment company powered by creativity and technology, we’d be thrilled to welcome you aboard. LET’S GO!

AI Engineering Technical Lead

The Applied Intelligence Data Engineering team is seeking an AI Engineering Technical Lead
to drive the design, development, and productionization of AI-powered data products acrossParamount streaming platforms.

This role will lead the development of intelligent systems that leverage real-time and batch data
to power personalization, recommendations, content discovery, and advanced analytics. You will
work at the intersection of data engineering, machine learning, and software engineering,
building scalable AI systems that integrate tightly with our real-time data ingestion platform.
As a technical leader, you will define architecture, guide implementation, mentor engineers, and
ensure production-grade performance, scalability, and reliability of AI-driven systems.

Key Responsibilities
Lead AI System Design & Development
● Develop real-time and batch inference pipelines integrated with streaming data
platforms.
● Design feature engineering pipelines leveraging high-volume behavioral and content
metadata.
● Implement end-to-end ML workflows from data ingestion to model serving.
Build AI-Powered Data Products
● Develop production-grade AI services that power user-facing and internal data products.
● Design APIs and services to expose AI capabilities to downstream applications and platforms.
● Ensure tight integration between AI systems and the core data platform.
Architect Scalable ML Infrastructure
● Define architecture for model training, evaluation, deployment, and monitoring.
● Build and optimize feature stores, model registries, and inference services.
● Design systems that support low-latency, high-throughput model serving.
● Establish best practices for reproducibility, versioning, and lifecycle management.
Production Reliability & Model Performance
● Monitor and optimize model performance, latency, and system reliability in production.
● Implement observability for data quality, feature drift, and model degradation.
● Establish automated testing, validation, and deployment pipelines for ML systems.
● Ensure scalability and cost efficiency across AI workloads.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
● Partner with Data Engineers to integrate AI pipelines with real-time and batch data systems.
● Collaborate with Product Managers to define AI-driven product capabilities and roadmap.
● Work with Software Engineers to integrate AI services into user-facing applications.
● Align with analytics and experimentation teams to measure model impact.
Technical Leadership
● Lead architectural decisions for AI/ML systems and data-driven applications.
● Mentor engineers in machine learning engineering, system design, and best practices.
● Establish standards for model development, deployment, and operational excellence.
● Drive innovation in applied AI across streaming and content platforms.

Required Technical Skills
Machine Learning & AI Systems
● Strong experience building and deploying machine learning models in production.
● Expertise in recommendation systems, personalization, ranking models, or NLP.
● Experience with model training frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch, or similar).
● Understanding of feature engineering, model evaluation, and experimentation frameworks.
Data & Feature Engineering
● Experience designing large-scale feature pipelines using batch and streaming data.
● Strong knowledge of data modeling and transformation for ML use cases.
● Familiarity with feature stores and real-time feature serving architectures.
Streaming & Real-Time Systems
● Experience integrating ML systems with real-time data platforms (e.g., Kafka, Pub/Sub).
● Understanding of event-driven architectures and low-latency processing patterns.
● Ability to design real-time inference and decisioning systems.
Cloud & Distributed Systems
● Strong experience with cloud-native architectures (GCP preferred).
● Experience deploying ML systems in Kubernetes-based environments.
● Understanding of distributed systems, scalability, and fault tolerance.
Software Engineering & APIs
● Proficiency in Python, Java, or similar languages for production systems.
● Experience building microservices and APIs for model serving.
● Strong software engineering fundamentals, including testing, CI/CD, and observability.

Basic Qualifications
● Strong foundation in machine learning engineering, data systems, and distributed
architecture.
● Proven track record of building and scaling AI/ML systems in production environments.
● Experience working with real-time data platforms and high-scale user-facing systems.
● Ability to balance long-term architecture with rapid product delivery.
● Excellent leadership, problem-solving, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
● Self-motivated, quality-driven, and focused on delivering measurable impact through AI.

Preferred Qualifications
● Experience in streaming, media, or consumer-facing platforms.
● Familiarity with experimentation platforms (A/B testing) and metrics-driven optimization.
● Experience building AI-powered data products and platform capabilities

Paramount Streaming, a division within Paramount Global, is the home to the company's direct-to-consumer services spanning free and paid in the form of Pluto TV and Paramount+. Pluto TV is the global leader in free ad-supported TV, delivering more than 1,400 global channels and an extensive library of streaming content, including live and original channels. Paramount+, digital subscription video-on-demand and live streaming service, combines live sports, breaking news, and A Mountain of Entertainment™. Paramount+ features an expansive library of original series, hit shows and popular movies across every genre from world-renowned brands and production studios, including SHOWTIME®.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Hiring Salary Range: $156,800.00 - 235,200.00. 

The hiring salary range for this position applies to New York, California, Colorado, Washington state, and most other geographies. Starting pay for the successful applicant depends on a variety of job-related factors, including but not limited to geographic location, market demands, experience, training, and education.  The benefits available for this position include medical, dental, vision, 401(k) plan, life insurance coverage, disability benefits, tuition assistance program and PTO or, if applicable,  as otherwise dictated by the appropriate Collective Bargaining Agreement.   

Skydance is an equal opportunity employer (EOE)

We embrace 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. In line with the laws of the country or region in which the role is based, this includes consideration without regard to race, color, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship status, religion or belief, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, pregnancy, parenthood, physical or mental disability, genetic information, military or protected veteran status, union status or any other category protected by applicable law.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability, you may request a reasonable accommodation during the job application and/or recruitment process. You can request reasonable accommodations by calling 212.846.5500 or by sending an email to [email protected]. Only messages left for this purpose will be returned.