Sr 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: 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:

• The Data Platforms Technical Program Management team is looking for a Technical Program Manager and Scrum Leader to drive business-critical initiatives across multiple teams within Data Platforms and across the Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology portfolio of digital consumer-facing products. This role will partner with Product Management and Engineering to translate business value into actionable plans and execute on the delivery of strategic data initiatives. This role requires technical understanding, attention to detail, a strong sense of accountability and ownership, collaboration, and experience managing cross workstream teams. If you are someone who thrives in a collaborative environment, jumps at the opportunity to work on impactful and complex problems, and constantly seeks out new challenges, then this is a great role for you!

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Drive execution and delivery of multiple high-profile big data & analytics projects from start to finish.
• Own end-to-end solution delivery of the assigned program.
• Track and manage dependencies across multiple projects; lead escalation processes to make issues visible to stakeholders and leadership; drive resolution of dependency issues through the process.
• Identifies project risks; drives to resolution and communicates prioritized mitigation plans to stakeholders.
• Develop trusted partnerships with stakeholders by collaborating and delivering on common goals. Ensure that projects and priorities support partner's strategic plans and each project is managed to ensure on-time implementation and flawless execution.
• Collaborate with Product Managers on project objectives and provide clear communications to teams and stakeholders on milestones, deliverables, and success criteria.
• Collaborates with Product and Engineering to break user stories into actionable technical tasks and facilitate producing tickets that inform Engineering and Quality Assurance of desired outputs
• Collaborate with QA partners to identify test milestones and support test phases or activities including Bug Triage and User Acceptance Testing.
• Provide timely updates on the status of projects to a cross-functional audience in multiple formats.
• Leverage Agile and SDLC methodologies to lead Scrum, Kanban, and Agile teams on a daily basis, ensuring successful delivery of software development projects in accordance with the organization’s delivery framework and established best practices.
• Create and maintain project documentation (primarily in Confluence) and project status (primarily in Jira and Airtable) that is the single source of truth about a project to keep teams aligned and informed.

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic Qualifications

• 5+ years of practical experience in delivering programs and projects in Data and Analytics, Business Intelligence, Instrumentation, Measurement, Data Collection, Big Data, Data Warehousing. Familiar with relevant technological solutions, industry best practices. [Need example during screening of actual E2E programs and projects candidate has delivered.]
• 5+ years of experience with and/or current working knowledge of BI tools, analytics, principles (MDM, data governance), practices and procedures.
• Experience with data platforms such as Databricks and Snowflake.
• Experience with data visualization, aware of various tools, technologies.
• Good understanding of instrumentation / measurement / data collection / data engineering challenges.
• Good understanding of classical analytical methods; including relevant theories.
• Demonstrated ability to drive initiatives forward to completion through collaboration and consensus across functional areas.
• Solid orchestration and problem-solving skills with ability to focus both strategically and tactically to achieve project goals.
• Must be capable of managing, tracking, and troubleshooting multiple projects in a deadline-driven environment with cross-functional teams, vendors, and partners.
• Experience building broad, large-scale communications plans.
• Love for Data and taking chaos and turning it into something actionable.
• High sense of ownership and a focus on building fast without sacrificing quality.
• Experience in Agile software development with expertise in Scrum methodology and practices.
• Experience with technical Release Management.
• Current knowledge of modern program management, analysis, and reporting tools such as Jira (including Structure Boards and/or Jira Sheets/JXL), Confluence and Airtable.

Preferred Qualifications

• PMP / CSM / CSP Certification with thorough understanding of Scrum Agile Methodologies

Required Education  

• BA/BS or equivalent experience required

The hiring range for this position in Glendale, CA is $129,300.00 to $173,300.00 per year, and in New York, NY is $135,400.00 to $181,600.00 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.