Lead Technical Program Manager - Machine Learning

The Walt Disney Company•New York, NY

3d•$163,100 - $200,000•Onsite

About The Position

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.

Requirements

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)
Bachelor’s degree in a relevant technical field

Nice To Haves

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
Graduate degree in a relevant technical or management-focused field

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
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).