Principal Technical Program Manager

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: program/portfolio management and tracking; organization-level capital and resource management and allocation; process management; technical incident management; and our administrative and workplace experience support team.

Job Summary:

The successful candidate will lead strategic, high-impact technical programs for Disney’s Advertising alliance—improving efficiency, effectiveness, and delivery velocity across the product and technology organization. Operating in ambiguity, they define program scope, success metrics, and operating mechanisms, then drive cross-functional alignment and execution to measurable outcomes. They own portfolio governance and investment planning at alliance scale (process, tooling, documentation, and reporting), partnering with engineering, product, finance, and leadership to enable capacity-based prioritization and trade-offs. The role also owns quarterly planning and the annual operating plan (AOP) planning processes across a large portfolio of initiatives and capital investments.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Lead execution of large, high-impact, alliance-level initiatives with clear milestones, success metrics, and launch criteria.

• Drive quarterly planning at scale (100+ teams), translating strategic priorities into committed, capacity-based delivery plans.
• Build and maintain capacity models that account for existing commitments, new initiatives, dependencies, and cross-fleet constraints.
• Define and evolve portfolio governance, planning standards, and execution mechanisms (process, tooling, documentation, and reporting) that scale across the organization.
• Establish operating rhythms and reporting to ensure predictable delivery, quality, and readiness across organizations.
• Own the single source of truth for initiative status, phase, cost, capacity, and delivery risk.
• Partner with finance and portfolio teams to manage new investments, supplemental requests, and in-year adjustments.
• Influence without authority across engineering, product, data science, and business teams to drive alignment on priorities, trade-offs, and delivery expectations.
• Act as a trusted thought partner and program leader for complex, ambiguous initiatives—driving clarity, decisions, and delivery.
• Partner with TPMs across Ad Platforms to produce quarterly execution plans and drive cross-org readiness.
• Translate complex technical concepts and risks into clear business and execution implications for product, engineering, and leadership.
• Mentor senior TPMs and contribute to program management best practices at the platform level.

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in business, engineering, communications or a related field.
• 10+  years of experience in engineering, program or product management and operations, strategic planning, or cross-functional program delivery in a technology or media environment.
• Proven experience building and scaling operational frameworks and planning processes.
• Proven experience leading large‑scale technical portfolios in complex, matrixed organizations.
• Strong organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple priorities across complex, matrixed teams.
• Proficiency with tools such as Airtable, JIRA, Confluence, Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Slides), Excel.
• Demonstrated ability to influence without authority and drive alignment across diverse stakeholder groups.
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to distill complexity and synthesize plans for executive audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working in a product-led organization, particularly with scaled agile or OKR-driven planning environments.
• Familiarity with technical project management and delivery life cycles.
• Experience in strategic initiative planning and financial tracking (e.g., CAR/CER funding processes).
• High attention to detail with a strong sense of ownership and accountability.
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity and driving clarity in fast-paced, evolving environments.

The hiring range for this position in Los Angeles, CA is $171,600 to $230,100 per year, in San Francisco, CA is $187,900 to $252,000, and in Seattle, WA is $179,700 to $241,000 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.