Manager, Software Engineering, AI Systems & Enablement

Job Description

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The AI Systems & Enablement group is composed of two workstreams - AI Systems and AI Enablement. AI Systems builds and operates CNN's AI-powered features and classification products. AI Enablement drives AI tool adoption, governance, and workflow improvements across the organization.
As the Engineering Manager for AI Systems & Enablement, you will start by managing a small team of experienced engineers and grow it significantly through 2026, with up to 8 direct reports across both workstreams. You will also partner closely with a dedicated Senior Technical Program Manager. This is a high-growth area for CNN. As the team scales and the AI Systems and AI Enablement workstreams mature, there is a clear path for this role to evolve into a senior leadership position overseeing dedicated managers for each branch.
Key challenges the team will tackle:
AI Systems:
• Consumer AI Features: Expand and iterate on consumer-facing AI features (article summaries, content classification, product classification/summarization, weather summaries) with a focus on accuracy, reliability, and editorial standards
• Brand Safety Classification: Complete the transition from a vended, rule-based brand safety system to an in-house LLM-based classification product that is already outperforming the incumbent - positioning CNN to scale classification to live streams and deliver unified content classification across the organization
• AI Platform Stewardship: Manage the current AI platform (prompt management, evaluation, caching, versioning, deployment, tenant management) through its evolution toward ML Foundations ownership
• Foundation Model Integration: Evaluate, select, and govern foundation model usage; build use case-specific prompt engineering UIs; monitor AI feature accuracy and performance
AI Enablement:
• AI Tool Adoption: Drive AI tool adoption to 80% weekly active usage across CNN Engineering, including Claude Code expansion from trial to org-wide availability, with measurable productivity gains tied to DORA metrics and code quality
• Measurement & Reporting: Establish monthly adoption dashboards and Quarterly AI Impact Report tying adoption to productivity metrics for senior leadership
• Workflow Improvements: Build AI-powered improvements to editorial and business team workflows that increase efficiency or quality
Your Role Accountabilities...
• Support, coach, mentor, and provide valuable feedback to the individuals you manage to help them excel - across a range of roles including software engineers, applied AI specialists, and potentially additional disciplines as the team grows
• Work with cross-functional partners and stakeholders on activities such as planning, technical strategy, quality, and delivery
• Partner with engineers within the team and across the organization to build, operate, and iterate on AI-powered features and internal AI tools, ensuring accuracy, reliability, and trustworthiness standards appropriate for a news organization
• Partner with product, editorial, and business teams on feature requirements, accuracy standards, and user feedback - serving as the connective tissue between AI capabilities and CNN's user-facing and internal products
• Partner with Machine Learning, ML Platform, and Data Platform teams for model approach decisions, deployment infrastructure, and production data access
• Work closely with the Senior TPM to manage intake, delivery, and cross-team coordination as the portfolio of AI features and tools expands
• Lead other engineers on the team by example, code reviews, and coaching, ensuring that code is readable, maintainable, scalable, observable, and resilient
• Champion improvements to developer experience, integrations, and testing processes
• Leverage vended and open-source cloud technologies to reduce maintenance costs and improve efficiencies, ensuring our products remain cost-effective
• Build and scale the team through hiring, onboarding, and establishing team norms for a rapidly growing group
Here Is the Approach We Value...
• Review and provide guidance on production-quality code that adheres to industry standards and best practices (IaC, CI/CD, etc.)
• Demonstrate a passion for AI-powered product development, with a strong sense of responsibility for the quality and accuracy of what your team ships
• Take ownership of issues and be a strong advocate for your team and the products
• Embrace failure as a learning opportunity - use research and experimentation to ultimately choose the best solutions that meet company goals
• Follow a progressive development methodology, moving from proof-of-concept to prototype to production release
• Enhance the effectiveness of your team and our partners by sharing your knowledge, communicating about complex AI technologies and problems in simple terms, and driving technical decisions
• Collaborate across functions, squads, teams, and organizations to best serve our users

Qualifications & Experience...
• 8+ years of progressively complex experience designing, building, and shipping products
• 5+ years of experience managing engineering teams
• 5+ years of software engineering experience building production applications, ideally including AI/ML-powered features
• 3+ years of experience with cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and production systems
• Experience leading engineers who build applications that integrate ML models and/or foundation models (LLMs, GenAI)
• Familiarity with GenAI application patterns - prompt engineering, evaluation frameworks, foundation model integration, RAG, caching, and cost management
• Familiarity with experimentation frameworks and A/B testing methodologies
• Experience establishing measurement frameworks for tool adoption or developer productivity
• A proven track record of building web-scale products that are highly available and performant
• Passion for growing engineers through mentorship, talent acquisition, and professional development
• Experience scaling teams - hiring, onboarding, and establishing culture and processes for a growing group
• A collaborative mindset, understanding that great results come from teamwork and a positive culture
• Proven success leading complex projects within an engineering team: knowing when to handle issues independently, when to rally the right people for alignment, and when to escalate
• Comfort navigating ambiguity in a fast-evolving space - GenAI best practices are still being established
• Excellent communication, presentation, and documentation skills
The Nice to Haves...
• Experience building consumer-facing GenAI features in production
• Experience with LLM evaluation, prompt versioning, or AI content quality measurement
• Experience building internal developer tools or productivity tooling
• Familiarity with content classification, summarization, or NLP applications
• Experience in a news, media, or content-heavy environment where accuracy and trust are paramount
• Experience leading AI enablement or developer experience programs across an engineering organization

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, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, mental or physical disability, and genetic information, marital status, citizenship status, military status, protected veteran status 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.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-eo8eq2-216-73-216-170-42 in your application.