Lead Technical Program Manager

Disney Entertainment & 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:

As a Senior Technical Program Manager for the team, you will partner with Engineering Leads to understand engineering needs, translate those needs to engineering requirements, and collaborate with all impacted teams and external partners to ensure the successful launch of many capabilities that will impact our global commerce platform. The right person for this role is proficient in technology and is comfortable with acting as a program strategist for a development team. You will need to move and adapt quickly as needs change. You are encouraged to always maintain a pulse on development progress and manage the inevitable change over the lifecycle of a project so that deadlines are met with excellent products and happy team members.

This position requires proven experience in delivering large, ambiguous, and highly technical programs. Ideal candidates must be highly proactive, detail-oriented, and able to autonomously work on multiple assignments that may span the department. They must be capable of digging into technical details and clearly communicating schedules, risks, status, and processes to a variety of business and technical audiences. They must be able to partner with closely with product managers and technical leads to coordinate schedules and deliverables.

This role will be aligned with the GCI Foundational Platform, Orchestration, and Performance teams, focusing on availability, scaling, performance, reliability, and observability. The successful candidate will lead tech-driven initiatives to meet our 99.999% operational excellence key performance requirements (OpEx KPR). They will work closely with highly technical teams, including Engineering Excellence (EE), Platform Architecture Group (PAG), GCI Orchestration, and GCI Performance, to harden services, build architecture, ensure scaling, and create a forward-looking roadmap. Strong technical architecture aptitude is essential.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Deliver projects from concept to completion by collaborating with engineering teams, product management, design, and other cross-functional stakeholders.
• Understand architectural and design specifications. Suggest alternate solutions that achieve business goals and/or drive alternate solution development via collaborative mechanisms such as story mapping and whiteboarding.
• Facilitate technical meetings; follow the discussions to summarize and capture outcomes.
• Facilitate team agile ceremonies (standups, grooming, team retrospective and planning sessions) and ensure they are effective and efficient.
• Track team progress against results and determine solutions to get back on-track when things fall behind schedule.
• Engage with the development teams to build delivery timelines of feature sets for projects and be able to sequence the work based on priorities.
• Collaborate with other TPMs to understand cross-team dependencies and prioritize the work to avoid impediments.
• Attend project meetings and be ready represent engineering teams in communicating team progress, risks, and mitigation plans.
• Prioritize multiple team requests and balance that against other priorities and committed work. Must understand the impact of injecting these requests to the team’s backlog.
• Ensure that all involved parties understand and accept their roles and responsibilities.
• Navigate the TWDC to effectively drive progress, even when the scope of responsibilities may be unclear.
• Track and report key program metrics, informing stakeholders as appropriate.
• Facilitate all build activities (including QA and UAT), as per plan (where applicable)
• Proactively drive, track, and report on budgets
• Collaborate with other program management colleagues to coordinate activities across multiple technology teams.
• Effortlessly sift through “noise” and facilitate discussions and activities with a laser focus towards results.
• Exemplify leadership characteristics through collaboration, work ethic, and creative thinking. Strive to inspire others and deliver the best possible outputs.

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

• 7+ years of experience managing large-scale, strategic, software development programs in a well-established global technology organization.
• Proven ability to facilitate effective communication across disparate teams.
• Evidence of strong planning, delivery, and problem-solving skills
• Superb written and verbal communications, presentation skills, and meeting facilitation skills (especially when working with senior leadership)
• BA/BS or equivalent experience required.

The hiring range for this position in New York, NY is $159,500.00 to $213,900.00 per year and in Santa Monica, CA is $152,200.00 to $204,100.00 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.