Senior Principal, Data Systems

Welcome to Warner Bros. Discovery… the stuff dreams are made of.

Who We Are…

When we say, “the stuff dreams are made of,” we’re not just referring to the world of wizards, dragons and superheroes, or even to the wonders of Planet Earth. Behind WBD’s vast portfolio of iconic content and beloved brands, are the storytellers bringing our characters to life, the creators bringing them to your living rooms and the dreamers creating what’s next…

From brilliant creatives, to technology trailblazers, across the globe, WBD offers career defining opportunities, thoughtfully curated benefits, and the tools to explore and grow into your best selves. Here you are supported, here you are celebrated, here you can thrive.

Your New Role:  

The Senior Principal, Data Systems reports to the VP Client Engineering and Solutions Architecture  and drives the architecture and evolution of WBD’s enterprise data platforms. This role owns the design of scalable data lakes, real-time pipelines, and knowledge graph–driven systems that power forecasting, yield optimization, identity, and advanced measurement. By setting technical direction, establishing data governance standards, and partnering with global engineering teams, the Senior Principal ensures WBD’s platforms are cloud-native, cost-efficient, and compliant. Acting as both hands-on architect and strategic advisor, the role enables next-generation monetization by transforming fragmented data into an integrated, intelligent foundation across linear and digital ecosystems.

Your Role Accountabilities: 

Data Systems Architecture & Strategy 
The Senior Principal defines the vision and architecture for WBD’s enterprise-scale data platforms. They design blueprints for data lakes, real-time processing, and audience graphs that ensure scalability, interoperability, and compliance across converged advertising and media ecosystems. 

Solution Design & Technical Delivery 
This role leads the end-to-end design of critical data workflows—covering ingestion, transformation, activation, and advanced analytics. The Senior Principal partners with engineering teams to deliver high-performance, cloud-native solutions that directly enable forecasting, yield optimization, and monetization. 

Modernization & Optimization of Data Platforms 
The Senior Principal drives the evolution of legacy data systems into modular, cost-optimized platforms. They lead rationalization to eliminate redundancy, embed observability and lineage, and establish automation practices that improve performance, reliability, and efficiency. 

Strategic Partnership & Thought Leadership 
This leader acts as a technical advisor to product, sales, operations, and engineering stakeholders, ensuring data platforms serve both near-term business needs and long-term strategy. They influence industry direction by engaging with technology partners, open-source communities, and standards bodies. 

Governance, Security & Data Trust 
The Senior Principal sets data governance standards and KPIs, ensuring quality, resiliency, and security are consistently achieved. They enforce compliance with global privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA, VPPA), safeguarding trust in WBD’s data foundation. 

Qualifications & Experience 

• Data Systems Leadership: 15+ years of experience architecting and scaling enterprise-grade data platforms, with a proven track record in large-scale ingestion, transformation, and activation pipelines. 

• Distributed Data Expertise: Advanced knowledge of open data Lakehouse formats (Iceberg, Delta, Hudi), distributed compute frameworks (Spark, Flink, Presto), and streaming technologies (Kafka, K