Lead Machine Learning Engineer

At Disney Experiences Technology, our team creates world-class immersive and digital experiences for the Company’s vacation brands, Disney’s Parks and Resorts worldwide, Disney Cruise Line, Aulani, A Disney Resort & Spa, and Disney Vacation Club. The Disney Experiences Technology team is responsible for the end-to-end digital and physical Guest experience for all technology & digital-led initiatives across the Attractions & Entertainment, Food & Beverage, Resorts & Transportation, and Merchandise lines of business as well as other initiatives including the My Disney Experience  app and Hey, Disney!

The team is seeking a results-oriented and hands-on Lead Machine Learning Engineer to design, develop, and deploy high-impact AI/ML solutions that drive measurable business value across our entertainment company. In this role, you will lead complex, cross-functional projects with a strong emphasis on reuse, scalability, reliability, and performance.

The Lead ML Engineer will report to the ML Engineering Manager.

The DXT AI Technology Platform team is responsible for building an AI enablement platform for the DX segment that provides streamlined AI & Generative AI capabilities for the segment to build solutions around and on top of. The Lead Machine Learning Engineer will design, develop, implement enterprise grade and robust AI/ML solutions, including agentic systems, multi-modal models, RAG, and Responsible AI applications.

This position is in office.

• Develop sophisticated, production-scale AI systems, including multi-step agentic workflows and multi-agent orchestration platforms.
• Build tools & agents with advanced capabilities in reasoning, planning, and adaptive tool utilization to address complex business challenges.
• Drive complete ownership of the AI/ML lifecycle – encompassing implementation, comprehensive testing, deployment, and continuous operational monitoring – delivering projects on schedule and to specification.
• Produce high-quality, maintainable code for model training pipelines, evaluation frameworks, and inference services that meet production standards.
• Partner strategically with cross-functional stakeholders including product leaders, data scientists, application teams, vendors, and partners to align on requirements, iterate on solutions, and deliver successful outcomes.
• Provide hands‑on technical leadership, driving architectural decisions and championing best practices across AI development, LLMOps, quality assurance, and production deployment.
• Design and implement responsible AI frameworks including hallucination detection, safety guardrails, comprehensive evaluation systems, and observability infrastructure to ensure model reliability, accuracy, and ethical deployment.
• Establish comprehensive evaluation frameworks for Large Language Models and agent-based systems, measuring model quality, task success rates, safety compliance, and operational effectiveness.
• Proactively identify and resolve technical blockers that could impact project timelines or deliverables.
• Communicate technical strategy and progress to executive leadership and key stakeholders with clarity and confidence.
• Engage directly in development and problem‑solving, particularly on high‑complexity technical challenges, to maintain project velocity and quality.
• Drive innovation through research and experimentation with emerging AI technologies and frameworks, evaluating and integrating new capabilities that advance our platform.

• 7+ years of proven expertise in designing, building, and deploying AI/ML solutions at scale, with 1-2 years of production experience in Generative AI technologies.
• Strong foundation in machine learning including statistical modeling, supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms.
• Advanced skills in prompt engineering with deep understanding of optimization techniques and best practices for LLM interactions.
• Expert‑level programming proficiency in Python and AI/ML development ecosystems.
• Deep expertise in modern AI frameworks including LLM application development and agentic systems (Lang Chain, CrewAI, or similar).
• Comprehensive MLOps experience with…