Senior Manager, Data Systems Operations

Senior Manager, Data Systems Operations

At Disney, we're storytellers. We make the impossible, possible. The Walt Disney Company is a world-class entertainment and technological leader. Walt's passion was to continuously envision new ways to move audiences around the world—a passion that remains our touchstone in an enterprise that stretches from theme parks, resorts and a cruise line to sports, news, movies and a variety of other businesses. Uniting each endeavor is a commitment to creating and delivering unforgettable experiences — and we're constantly looking for new ways to enhance these exciting experiences.

The Enterprise Technology & Data mission is to deliver technology solutions that align to business strategies while enabling enterprise efficiency and promoting cross-company collaborative innovation. Our group drives competitive advantage by enhancing our consumer experiences, enabling business growth, and advancing operational excellence.

The Data Solutions & Platforms group is part of Enterprise Technology & Data. We are responsible for designing and developing enterprise solutions and managing a diverse portfolio of products and tools related to Data, Analytics, AI and Automation used by business teams across The Walt Disney Company.

The Senior Manager of Data Systems Operations is a key role on the team, managing Operations for a portfolio of over 30 applications and services related to Data, Analytics, AI and Automations. The role is also responsible for managing a team of internal (onshore) and external (offshore) Systems Engineers who perform daily operations for all the services in the portfolio.

The Senior Manager of Data Systems Operations is a technology leader, passionate about operating and delivering enterprise-class services and building a high performing team. This role requires a commitment to operational excellence, service management and continuous improvement. Some of the services and platforms this role will be responsible for include:

• Enterprise Data Lakehouse (Snowflake)
• Business Intelligence Tools (Tableau, Power BI, BusinessObjects)
• Finance Data Warehouses (SAP BW, SAP HANA)
• Human Resources Business Intelligence
• Data Pipelines
• Data Tools (Dataiku, Domino Data Lab, Alation, Alteryx)
• Automation Tools (UiPath)

You will be working in a challenging, fast-paced, highly collaborative and rewarding environment, as a member of product and project teams that work closely with each other and with our business partners to deliver innovative and industry-leading business solutions.

What You'll Do:

• Managing team members and vendors to deliver 24x7 platform technical support, ensuring accurate and timely delivery of critical business data
• Operating high-performance, highly scalable and flexible, cost-effective data integration platform solutions that meet business requirements and conform to architectural designs and technology strategies. Overseeing all operational aspects of all platforms and services in the Data portfolio including availability, performance, capacity, currency, scalability, resiliency, security, compliance and licensing
• Responsible for incident management for any outages or incidents impacting live production systems. Managing, communications and orchestrating troubleshooting and remediation activities.
• Providing quality and timely resolution of platform defects/ problems & enhancement requests through the management of the application development lifecycle
• Responsible for managing security and compliance for all applications and services in the portfolio
• Running an agile-based request management workflow, focused on maximizing velocity, improving quality and reducing backlog
• Partnering with Business & Solution Architects to identify opportunities for improved customer service, increased agility and availability
• Working with multiple vendor/partners to deliver existing services against Key Performance Indicators, managing performance against contractual terms and identifying new / rationalizing existing services.
• Ensuring Service Operations, Knowledge Management, Continuous Improvement, Service Level & Availability Management are operationalized across the team
• Developing and guiding direct reports by providing career path conversations and mentoring, helping them achieve their goals through effective development and training plans

Required Qualifications & Skills:

• Minimum 10 years in technology management and 7+ years successfully leading engineering and operations teams supporting enterprise data & analytics platforms and applications
• Hands-on Dev-Ops experience doing development and operations support for data & analytics platforms and applications
• Experience with highly scalable, enterprise, cloud-based data platforms
• Experience managing people and distributed teams—internal and external resources, onshore and offshore
• Deep understanding of security and compliance

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience managing Finance data systems
• Experience with SAP technologies (S/4, HANA, BW, BDC, SLT)
• Experience with Snowflake
• Experience managing SOX controls
• Hands-on experience with AI/ML and using AI to improve and speed up daily work processes

Required Education:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience