Lead Technical Program Manager - Machine Learning

This is a Full Time Job

Job Summary:

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.