Sr Mgr Data Engineering (Agentic AI focus)

About Sony Pictures Entertainment:
Sony Pictures Entertainment is seeking an innovative data engineer to join the Insights, Strategy and Analytics data analytics organization. The ISA team focuses on enhancing analytical capabilities and infrastructure for internal stakeholders across television production, distribution, and marketing. As the world’s largest independent studio, Sony Pictures Television produces original content for streaming and linear networks globally, including popular series across various genres. Our series – from dramas like THE NIGHT AGENT, THE LAST OF US, and THE BOYS, to comedies like TWISTED METAL and COBRA KAI, to unscripted series like JEOPARDY!, WHEEL OF FORTUNE, and AMERICAN IDOL – are beloved by our fans and customers worldwide.  
 

Role Summary:
The Senior Manager will lead our efforts to deploy modern tools and processes including genAI and agentic AI to accelerate and scale our data management processes. This role will evaluate technologies, prototype implementation and rapidly deploy agentic AI and similar innovations to improve data quality, data reliability, and team velocity. It is a critical part of the Insights, Strategy, and Analytics team’s strategic vision and overall capabilities. The senior manager will also lead business-facing projects, working closely with non-technical stakeholders, data visualization engineers and data scientists to enable ISA to deliver more sophisticated and impactful analytical tools.

Key Responsibilities:

AI Innovation: Drive technical innovation within the data engineering and data stewardship teams to leverage agentic AI and other emerging technologies to boost the speed, quality and accuracy of our work across the data lifecycle:

• New sources: data profiling, pipeline development, cataloging, documentation
• Data cleaning:  scrubbing malformed values, normalization
• Data enrichment:  matching, harmonization, accuracy confidence scoring, generating synthetic & genAI data
• Data operations & data stewardship:  pipeline monitors and alerts, anomaly detection, proactive defect detection
• Data stewardship: nimble adaptation as upstream sources evolve

Data Engineering: Translate complex business requirements into the design of robust ELT pipelines, data models, and operational processes. Establish tools and processes to ensure data quality and accuracy.

Project Delivery: Contribute to fast-paced project teams working to build new ISA analytical tools.  Source and model data from disparate systems to create data assets used by data scientists and data visualization leads, with ample collaboration across disciplines.

Accelerate The Team: As an experienced IC championing transformative tools, accelerate the overall team velocity and scale our outputs across both data engineering and data stewardship. Coach and train other team members, partner with IT and governance teams to enable new capabilities, and advocate for modernization throughout the ISA product development lifecycle.

Qualifications:

Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Data Science, Business Analytics, or related fields; advanced degrees are a plus.

Experience: 10+ years in data engineering or related technical leadership roles, preferably in media and entertainment or related industries.

AI Expertise:

• Broad knowledge of Generative AI, LLMs, agentic AI paradigms, model lifecycle landscape for modernizing legacy data pipelines & data management processes.
• Successful track record of implementing agentic AI workflows and testing frameworks to improve data quality and reliability.
• 2+ years hands-on experience applying AI to data management processes.

Technical Acumen: 

• Proficiency in data engineering, analytics tools, and methodologies.
• Expert-level SQL & Python skills.
• Hands-on experience with modern orchestration tools like Airflow.
• Conceptual expertise in data modeling and system architecture design within a modern data stack.
• Familiarity with software engineering best practices (e.g. source control, code reviews, unit testing)
• Skilled at creating ERDs, architectural diagrams and technical specs.

Business Focus & Communication Skills: 

• Deep knowledge and interest in business concepts, entities and relationships relevant to a TV production & distribution studio.
• A proven track record of understanding complex data domains to effectively organize and manage data assets for analytical use.
• Strong communication skills to effectively collaborate non-technical stakeholders to gather requirements, and inherent curiosity to understand the business systems and processes where much of our data originates.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Industry Experience: Experience in the media and entertainment industry is a plus, but candidates from other industries are welcome to apply.
• Passion for Entertainment: A genuine interest in film and television is appreciated but not mandatory.
• Strategic Mindset: Strong problem-solving skills and attention to detail.
• Collaborative Team Builder: Experience working in diverse, multicultural, and international environments.
• Continuous Learner: A commitment to ongoing learning and innovation.

The anticipated base salary for this position is $167K to $200K. This role may also qualify for annual incentive and/or comprehensive benefits. The actual base salary offered will depend on a variety of factors, including without limitation, the qualifications of the individual applicant for the position, years of relevant experience, level of education attained, certifications or other professional licenses held, and if applicable, the location of the position.

Sony Pictures Entertainment is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other protected characteristics.

SPE will consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records in accordance with applicable law.

To request an accommodation for purposes of participating in the hiring process, you may contact us at [email protected].