Lead Technical Program Manager

Job Summary:

Disney Entertainment & ESPN Product & Technology

Technology is at the heart of Disney’s past, present, and future. Disney Entertainment & 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:

• This is a staff position within the DE&E Product & Technology: Business Operations – Technical Program Management organization.
• The Technical Program Manager will focus on the planning and execution of program deliverables within the Advertising alliance, with the potential to facilitate programs that cut across the department and other groups within the organization.
• Ideal candidates must be highly proactive, detail-oriented, and able to autonomously work on multiple assignments.
• They must be capable of attaining a strong understanding of technical details and clearly communicating schedules, risks, status, and processes to a variety of business and technical audiences.
• They must be able to partner closely with project managers and technical leads to coordinate schedules and deliverables.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Accountable for driving execution and delivery of a set of software development deliverables from start to finish.
• Define, optimize, and manage Agile project management ceremonies and processes for large project teams.
• Leverage experience with Agile and Scrum to lead teams to successful delivery.
• Lead delivery teams through the identification and management of risks and the resolution of issues, and escalating to management as appropriate.
• Facilitator – must be able to:
  • Facilitate team ceremonies
  • Facilitate meetings/workshops with groups of people beyond the immediate delivery team
  • Facilitate the team through the resolution of complex issues
  • Drive workshop/meeting to conclusion and/or actionable outcome
  • Ensure group participation
• Identify scope of inputs and outputs as dependencies for technical teams, resolve gaps and create program milestones that ensure work is sequenced across teams.
• Identify risks; drive resolutions and communicate prioritized mitigation plans to stakeholders.
• Monitor & adjust plans to respond to unplanned changes, ensuring programs are progressing to meet business goals.
• Monitor and report on team metrics around delivery
• Able to quickly solve complex problems in a challenging, dynamic environment with minimal direction.
• Provide frequent and transparent communication to the business and technical senior management, delivery teams and stakeholders regarding initiative health, issues, and risks.
• Demonstrate solid proficiency of technical project/program domain and able to confidently discuss with project team, partner teams, and stakeholders.
• Clearly articulate technical risks without the aid of engineering support
• Analyze and facilitate decisions around technical challenges with some direction.
• Effectively communicates complex and/or difficult information to both technical and non-technical audiences, including Executives.
• Interacts with internal and external peers, initiative stakeholders, and managers to exchange complex information.
• Ability to influence key decision-makers / stakeholders towards new business processes and technical solutions that best serve the Company.

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic Qualifications

• 7+ years of relevant experience
• 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) 

Preferred Qualifications

• Typically has 5 or more years of progressively complex related experience as a Scrum Lead, with hands-on experience with Agile/Scrum developing software applications in a highly-technical domain
• Typically has 5 or more years of experience managing formal application software development projects
• Formal project management certifications

Experience with:

• Experience working in a media technology environment  
• Advertising technology domain knowledge, or demonstrated aptitude for learning a technology-based engineering domain 

Required Education  

• BA/BS or equivalent experience required 

#disneytech

The hiring range for this position in Glendale and Santa Monica, CA $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.