Product Operations Manager II

Job Summary:

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.

Content Platforms & Operations is responsible for the development and ongoing advancement of the technical and operational functions driving the worldwide distribution and monetization of Disney’s linear networks and theatrical content. This includes Disney’s media supply chain and storage, network and theatrical distribution operations, media localization, network transmission and origination, and more. The global team also plays a critical role as the primary collaboration point for Product & Technology with Disney’s EMEA, APAC, and LATAM regional business teams.

As a member of the Product Operations team, you will have the opportunity to dive deep into the business capabilities and learn the processes behind the supply chain for Disney's top tier content – from the planning stage, all the way through delivery to consumers. Working in a cross-functional team environment with Product, Engineering, Infrastructure, QA, and Support, you will help ensure the smooth-running operations of content distribution, with focus on driving operational improvements and supporting the acceleration of our content businesses.

Job Summary:

The Content Platforms team is seeking a Product Operations Manager II to join our Product Operations organization. Our team strives to deliver operational excellence by elevating and evangelizing the Content Platforms products and services to our various business partners. In this role, you will be responsible for the enablement of our content platforms products and tools, working closely with our Product management and Engineering partners to sustain and improve current products, launch new systems, and support clients as they navigate our platforms to operate their business.  

This role will serve as a key touchpoint for business partners, responsible for participating in the product lifecycle and being a subject matter expert on process workflows and functional requirements. In addition, the role will own documenting new features and disseminating those updates to the customers through coordinating user acceptance testing, conducting user trainings, and crafting release and informational communications. Finally, this role will lead best practices for metrics reporting, providing stakeholders with monthly performance retrospectives, and translating raw metrics into actionable insights. The ideal candidate must work well in a collaborative environment and be able to define and implement processes that effectively deliver on the Product Operations team’s mission.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Serve as a platform expert, analyzing customer requests, identifying and documenting patterns and trends, and providing actionable insights to Product and Engineering for system improvements
• Guide the day-to-day activities of a remote team of business analysts supporting multiple systems across diverse disciplines
• Build and manage relationships with business stakeholders, addressing support inquiries, troubleshooting of potential issues, performing trainings, and onboarding users to new products
• Own communication to product end users, including feature release notes, project updates, and other strategic announcements
• Create, facilitate, and deliver root cause analysis reports for critical outage incidents to internal teams and customers
• Provide periodic updates/presentations on initiatives and metrics to peers, leadership, and business partners
• Participate in larger organizational Product Operations initiatives, such as crafting evergreen documentation, executing strategic communication plans, and defining processes that contribute to an improved team working culture
• Flexibly support evolving business priorities as needed to help achieve business objectives for the Product Operations team
• Demonstrate a commitment to fostering an inclusive and welcoming environment for all team members

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic Qualifications

• Minimum 3 years of experience in a professional role, preferably supporting clients in a technology/product environment
• Enthusiastic about helping people, solving problems, and championing products 
• Excellent communication skills, with an ability to distill information accurately and convey it (verbally and/or written) to business partners and internal technology teams
• Strong prioritization and organization skills with experience juggling time-sensitive requests from multiple business partners
• Energetic self-starter with a logical approach to problem solving and a technical aptitude 
• Ability to work in a fast-paced, dynamic and matrixed organization, executing on several initiatives concurrently while balancing competing priorities

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with enterprise tools such as Jira, Confluence, Airtable, etc., is preferred.
• Experience supporting a variety of application types, such as enterprise SaaS, on-prem software, content management systems, or other cloud-based solutions, is a plus.

Experience with:

• Experience working within a defect management process
• Some experience with Agile/Scrum methodology 
• Ideally an experienced writer, whose style can range from product requirements to documentation/operational guides to formal announcements/release notes
• Experience collaborating with Product Management and Engineering teams
• Demonstrated experience with AI tools, or a strong curiosity and willingness to learn about artificial intelligence technologies

Required Education  

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience.

The hiring range for this position in Glendale, CA is $106,900 to $143,300 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.