Lead Technical Program Manager - Machine Learning

This is not a remote role. You must be in the area or willing to relocate.

Department/Group Overview:

Cross-Media Measurement & Advanced Analytics (CMAA) resides within Research, Insights & Analytics (RIA). Our mission is to convert data and machine-learning-driven research into business-ready products and decision frameworks for content, marketing, and monetization. CMAA has many key initiatives spanning the following areas:

1. Data Science / ML / AI– productizing models and interfaces

2. Advanced Analytics – causal marketing & audience research

3. Forecasting – accurate baselines / guidance for content performance

4. Metadata – key content / audience metadata that power research

As part of CMAA, the Lead Technical Program Manager owns key components of our delivery framework— schedules, risk, and communication—for key initiatives spanning identity governance, metadata systems, forecasting platforms, and ML research initiatives.

Job Summary:

You will support multiple, cross-discipline programs that translate research and ML prototypes into production assets— dashboards, forecasting platforms, data and AI-drive applications—used by researchers, engineers, and business stakeholders Disney Entertainment-wide.

Partnering with Research, Engineering, ML/Data Science, and external contractors, you will support project and portfolio management and tracking; organization-level resource management and allocation; process management; technical incident management; and our administrative and workplace alignment focused on driving delivery for RIA’s data product, research, GenAI, ML and measurement priorities.

Responsibilities

• Coordinate multiple, complex technical programs concurrently across multiple engineering teams to launch data platforms products and services in a fast-paced and complex environment

• Develop strong partnerships with engineering, product management and analytics leaders to drive focus on strategic and tactical program objectives

• Build strategic relationships with key engineering and business leaders to ensure program success

• Drive teams in planning and executing roadmaps, releases, and work backlogs using agile methodologies

• Lead efforts to identify risks, resolve key project blockers, and establish appropriate resolution paths

• Fill in gaps across roles and functions as needed, performing as an adaptive problem solver

• Develop and execute change management and communication plans and engage with the stakeholders to report progress and raise issues

• Create a collaborative work environment that cultivates shared understanding, transparency, mastery, autonomy, innovation and continuous learning

• Exhibit a high tolerance for context switching and interruptions while remaining productive and able to provide effective guidance

• Strong verbal/written communication; able to translate technical issues for non-technical leadership

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

• Program planning & execution – charter scope, milestones, and success metrics for concurrent technical programs

• Stakeholder communication, storytelling, and reporting – craft status dashboards, OKR updates, and exec-level briefs translating technical progress into business value.          

• Process & tooling improvement – evaluate and roll out enhancements (Jira, Airtable, Miro, Confluence, LLM-powered doc search, automated metric boards).   

• Risk & dependency management – surface technical constraints (data privacy, model drift, platform limits), quantify impact, and drive mitigation plans.         

• Governance & documentation – champion best-practice templates for design, metadata lineage, and archival; enforce compliance (Data Gov/Internal Policy/GDPR/CCPA).      

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic Qualifications:

• Must have 7+ years of experience in technical program management, preferably with a focus on ML/AI, data engineering, data platforms, or data analytics

• Experience with large-scale organizational change efforts

• Experience in building broad, large-scale communications plans on all active initiatives and programs

• Love and interest for Data while taking ambiguity and turning it into something actionable

• High sense of ownership and focus on building fast with awareness of limitations

• Experience in Agile software development with expertise in Scrum methodology and practices

• Good understanding of SQL, ETL processing, Data Warehousing, and familiarity with BI Visualization tools such as Looker and Tableau

• Working knowledge of modern program management, analysis, tracking, and reporting tools such as Jira/Confluence, Airtable, G-Suite (Google: Docs, Sheets, Slides) and MS Office

• Knowledge of software development life cycle (SDLC)

Preferred Qualifications:

• 9+ years combined program/project leadership; 2+ years in media or streaming technology

• Familiarity with causal-inference methods, ML-ops observability, and privacy-preserving data linkage (RampID, Vizio/ACR), and GenAI workflows/tooling

• Exposure to identity services, consent management, and audience-graph governance

• Tooling expertise: Jira Advanced Roadmaps, Airtable Interfaces, Miro, Confluence, Tableau/Looker

Required Education:

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant technical field

Preferred Education:

•Graduate degree in a relevant technical or management-focused field

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in New York City is $163,100.00-$200,000.00 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.