Lead Technical Program Mgr

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology

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.

The Business Operations team helps guide and articulate technology strategy and research, and is responsible for driving the day-to-day operation of the Product & Technology organization, including: project and portfolio management and tracking; organization-level capital, space, and resource management and allocation; process management; technical incident management; and our administrative and workplace experience support team.

Job Summary:

The Data Platforms Technical Program Management team is looking for a Lead Program Manager and to drive business-critical data initiatives across multiple teams within Data Platforms 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 across highly complex, workstream teams. If you are someone who thrives in a collaborative environment, jumps at the opportunity to work on impactful and business critical problems, and constantly seeks out new challenges, then this is a great role for you.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Accountable for driving execution and delivery of extraordinarily high-profile technical, data platform projects from start to finish in a fast-paced and complex environment. Programs assigned to this level tend to be of the highest complexity and strategic priority. 
• Performs all other responsibilities of a Program Manager at an expert level, plus:
• Develop strong partnerships with engineering, product management and business partners to drive focus on strategic and tactical program objectives
• Understands all project domain components, including architecture, tools and deployment practices that development team is employing; can explain the purpose of component decisions at a high level
• Forecasts project risks proactively; analyzes and drives resolution of key project blockers
• Develop and execute change management and communication plans and engage with stakeholders to report progress and raise issues
• Document and communicate key decisions, accomplishments, problems, changes to plan, and go forward plans for assigned deliverable(s) to internal and external executive stakeholders
• Ability to lead technical discussions at the organizational level to drive decisions and next steps
• Strong written and verbal communication skills to articulate technical and delivery concepts for a Sr Executive level audience
• Serves as subject matter expert and "go to" person for guidance in program management discipline
• Defines, optimizes, and manages Agile project management processes at the team-of-teams level
• Solid grasp of team-of-teams level agile software development lifecycle methodologies, principles, and practices
• Manage capacity across team-of-teams to balance delivery priorities (business, technical, maintenance, etc.,)
• Create a collaborative work environment that cultivates shared understanding, transparency, mastery, autonomy, innovation and continuous learning

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

• 7+ years of practical experience in delivering large-scale data platform projects. Familiar with relevant technological solutions and industry best practices.
• Experience orchestrating execution across multiple business units or organizations with competing priorities, translating a broad, evolving set of cross-organizational dependencies into a coordinated delivery plan.
• Comfortable building program structure and alignment in ambiguous, fast-evolving environments, with the ability to sustain execution momentum on a foundational platform initiative over a multi-year horizon.
• Experience with and/or current working knowledge of typical consumer data platforms and service technologies at scale for consumer-facing multi-platform streaming and nonstreaming digital products (OTT/CTV, mobile, web). 
• 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 deadlinedriven 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  

• Bachelor’s degree in business management, computer science, or another related field.

The hiring range for this position in Seattle, WA is $163,100 - $218,700 per year and in Glendale, CA is $155,700 - $208,700 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.