Sr Technical Program Manager

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we’re reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world’s most beloved stories while also transforming Disney’s media business for the future. Whether that’s evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world.

A few reasons why we think you’d love working for Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology

• Building the future of Disney’s media business: DE&E Technologists are designing and building the infrastructure that will power Disney’s media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.
• Reach & Scale: The products and platforms this group builds and operates delight millions of consumers every minute of every day – from Disney+ and Hulu, to ABC News and Entertainment, to ESPN and ESPN+, and much more.
• Innovation: We develop and execute groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news.

Business Operations is the glue of DE&E Technology, with a relentless focus on connecting all the pieces of the business. All the components that make up the organization – engineering, product, design, operations, support and more – come together and move the business forward with oversight, effective prioritization, and guidance. This team synthesizes information from across the business to ensure leaders are armed with all the necessary data before making strategic and financial decisions. From forecasting, funding, tracking, and reporting on projects, to ways of working, and resource management, Business Operations has visibility and input into all aspects of the team.

Job Summary:

The Global Program Management – Data Platforms team is looking for a Technical Program Manager and Scrum Leader to drive business-critical initiatives across multiple teams within the Data Platforms Alliance and across the Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology portfolio of digital consumer-facing products. This role will partner with Product Management and Engineering to translate business value into actionable plans and execute on the delivery of strategic data initiatives. This role requires technical understanding, attention to detail, a strong sense of accountability and ownership, collaboration, and experience managing cross workstream teams. If you are someone who thrives in a collaborative environment, jumps at the opportunity to work on impactful and complex problems, and constantly seeks out new challenges, then this is a great role for you.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Drive execution and delivery of multiple high-profile big data & analytics projects from start to finish.
• Own end-to-end solution delivery of the assigned program.
• Track and manage dependencies across multiple projects; lead escalation processes to make issues visible to stakeholders and leadership; drive resolution of dependency issues through the process.
• Identifies project risks; drives to resolution and communicates prioritized mitigation plans to stakeholders.
• Develop trusted partnerships with stakeholders by collaborating and delivering on common goals. Ensure that projects and priorities support partner's strategic plans and each project is managed to ensure on-time implementation and flawless execution.
• Collaborate with Product Managers on project objectives and provide clear communications to teams and stakeholders on milestones, deliverables, and success criteria.
• Collaborates with Product and Engineering to break user stories into actionable technical tasks and facilitate producing tickets that inform Engineering and Quality Assurance of desired outputs
• Collaborate with QA partners to identify test milestones and support test phases or activities including Bug Triage and User Acceptance Testing.
• Provide timely updates on the status of projects to a cross-functional audience in multiple formats.
• Leverage Agile and SDLC methodologies to lead Scrum, Kanban, and Agile teams on a daily basis, ensuring successful delivery of software development projects in accordance with the organization’s delivery framework and established best practices.
• Create and maintain project documentation (primarily in Confluence) and project status (primarily in Jira and Airtable) that is the single source of truth about a project to keep teams aligned and informed.

Basic Qualifications

• Practical experience in delivering projects in Data and Analytics, Instrumentation, Measurement, Data Collection, Big Data, Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence. Familiar with relevant technological solutions, industry best practices.
• Experience with and/or current working knowledge of typical consumer data collection and measurement technologies at scale for consumer-facing multi-platform streaming and non-streaming digital products (OTT/CTV, mobile, web), including tools and vendors such as Adobe, Conviva, Comscore, Nielsen; advertising and marketing technology components (data platforms, data collection mechanisms, BI tools, analytics); principles (MDM, data governance), practices and procedures.
• Experience with data platforms such as Databricks and Snowflake.
• Experience with debugging tools such as browser dev tools and Charles Proxy.
• Experience with data visualization, aware of various tools, technologies.
• Good understanding of instrumentation / measurement / data collection / data engineering challenges.
• Good understanding of classical analytical methods; including relevant theories.
• Demonstrated ability to drive initiatives forward to completion through collaboration and consensus across functional areas.
• Solid orchestration and problem-solving skills with ability to focus both strategically and tactically to achieve project goals.
• Must be capable of managing, tracking, and troubleshooting multiple projects in a deadline-driven environment with cross-functional teams, vendors, and partners.
• Experience building broad, large-scale communications plans.
• Love for Data and taking chaos and turning it into something actionable.
• High sense of ownership and a focus on building fast without sacrificing quality.
• Experience in Agile software development with expertise in Scrum methodology and practices.
• Experience with technical Release Management.
• Current knowledge of modern program management, analysis, and reporting tools such as Jira (including Structure Boards and/or Jira Sheets/JXL), Confluence and Airtable.

Preferred Qualifications

• PMP / CSM / CSP Certification with thorough understanding of Scrum Agile Methodologies

Required Education  

• BS/BA

The hiring range for this position in Glendale, CA is $124,000.00 to $166,200.00 per year. The base pay actually offered will take into account internal equity and also may vary depending on the candidate’s geographic region, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience among other factors. A bonus and/or long-term incentive units may be provided as part of the compensation package, in addition to the full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the level and position offered.