Sr Product Mgr II

Technology is at the heart of Disney’s past, present, and future. Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is a global organization of engineers, product developers, designers, technologists, data scientists, and more – all working to build and advance the technological backbone for Disney’s media business globally.

The team marries technology with creativity to build world-class products, enhance storytelling, and drive velocity, innovation, and scalability for our businesses. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers. We work with every part of The Walt Disney Company’s media portfolio to advance the technological foundation and consumer media touch points serving millions of people around the world.

Here are a few reasons why we think you’d love working here:

• Building the future of Disney’s media: Our Technologists are designing and building the products and platforms that will power our media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.
• Reach, Scale & Impact: More than ever, Disney’s technology and products serve as a signature doorway for fans' connections with the company’s brands and stories. Disney+. Hulu. ESPN. ABC. ABC News…and many more. These products and brands – and the unmatched stories, storytellers, and events they carry – matter to millions of people globally.
• Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms, and solve complex and distinctive technical problems.

Product Management is responsible for driving the overall user experience, feature strategies and concepts, and engagement paradigms for Disney Entertainment & ESPN's global portfolio of consumer-facing streaming and digital products – including Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, ABC, ABC News, Nat Geo, Marvel, and Star Wars.

This role sits within the Media Product team, whose mission is to enhance our users’ content and viewing experiences through scalable, innovative capabilities across our media ecosystem. The team owns the end-to-end systems that power the content journey for our streaming subscribers, from acquisition to exhibition, across VOD, live, and linear formats.

Our responsibilities span across ingestion, metadata model and content catalog, media encoding, operational tooling, CDN, content security, and video players. Together, our platform ensures that every piece of entertainment, sports, and news content reaches audiences reliably, securely, and in the highest possible quality.

We are a team of technologists and product leaders who obsess about delivering seamless, world-class media experiences at global scale. We partner closely with engineering, operations, and business teams to ensure our media foundation not only supports today’s streaming needs but also anticipates those of the future.

Summary

We are seeking a Sr Product Manager II to lead innovation in media processing and optimization across our platform, advancing capabilities for next-generation codecs, cloud encoding, and media efficiency at global scale. This role drives the roadmap for Live and VOD media processing and will balance video quality, latency, cost, and performance to deliver the highest-quality streaming experiences efficiently and reliably. The individual will manage the media pipeline from content ingestion, transcoding, packaging, and distribution.   Furthermore, you will be expected to lead the investigation and implementation of advanced video technologies (video codecs, streaming protocols). Working closely with engineering and infrastructure partners, you will define KPIs, evolve our encoding architecture, and ensure our platform remains at the forefront of media technology delivering the best user experience to our customers.

Responsibilities

• Define and manage the product roadmap, including backlog ownership and prioritization of deliverables.
• Define success metrics, forecast outcomes, and build business cases to support investment in new initiatives.
• Lead discovery efforts through user studies and journey mapping, translating insights into product requirements, documentation (e.g., briefs, PRDs), and user stories.
• Research and analyze data to generate insights, validate hypotheses, and inform product direction.
• Collaborate with other Product Managers and Design to wireframes and refine user interfaces and functionality.
• Participate in agile development processes, including intake, refinement, acceptance testing, and release management.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with engineering, business stakeholders, and end users to align on goals and execution.
• Track and measure the impact of products and services, reporting progress against objectives.

Basic Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in product management or a related discipline.
• Familiarity with media, streaming, content management systems, or large scale platform domains.
• Proven ability to partner with engineering teams to define technical solutions and evaluate trade-offs for prioritization and implementation.
• Demonstrated analytical thinking and comfort using data to shape hypotheses, inform product design, and validate features.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep understanding of media encoding, transcoding, packaging, and workflow orchestration.
• Familiarity with next generation codecs for audio and video, adaptive bitrate streaming, packaging frameworks, and cloud-based processing.
• Familiarity with  industry standard content and media delivery specifications for SVOD and DMVPD VOD use cases (MovieLabs, CableLabs, IMF)
• Strong understanding of adaptive bitrate streaming technologies (HLS, DASH, CMAF)
• Experience with AI/ML video optimization.
• Knowledge of automated quality control systems
• Understanding of operational workflows for video processing (orchestration, tooling)

Required Education  

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field required

The hiring range for this position in New York, NY is $163,100 to $218,700 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.