Sr Manager Product Management

The Walt Disney Company • Glendale, CA

6d • Onsite

About The Position

The Content Intelligence team is seeking a visionary Senior Manager of Product Management to lead a team of high-performing Product Managers responsible for our AI-assisted product portfolio. Serving as a strategic leader and organizational bridge, you will set the long-term vision, operational strategy, and product roadmap for advanced technologies that intelligently analyze, enrich, and localize Disney’s world-class content catalog. In this role, you will lead through influence and direct management, building a high-performing product team while establishing a strong, product-led culture. You will navigate high-ambiguity spaces to incubate new product lines while ensuring existing automated workflows deliver significant, near-term business value. You will partner with executive stakeholders across Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and regional business teams to align priorities, manage resources, and deliver on high-impact capital initiatives.

Requirements

• 10+ years of product management experience, with 4+ years of formal people management experience; preferably within digital platforms, media services, and/or media supply chains.
• Proven track record of managing and developing other Product Managers, including setting professional development plans, driving recruiting/headcount planning, and establishing product management standards across a team.
• Experience executing joint planning cycles, managing complex upstream/downstream dependencies, and co-authoring shared roadmaps with peer teams in a highly matrixed, bi-coastal, or international organization.
• Experience managing platform products that integrate with first- and third-party cloud-based APIs and services.
• Strong understanding of the current AI/ML landscape and evolving model capabilities, with proven experience applying these technologies, preferably to digital platforms, media services, or media supply chain workflows.
• Proven ability to balance “dual horizon” high-level strategic roadmap formulation with daily tactical execution and decision-making.
• Skilled at translating long-term initiatives into immediate, actionable delivery plans and operating plans, while allocating resources and driving feature prioritization based on business value, technical risk, and engineering effort.
• Demonstrated capability to develop robust, data-driven business cases focused on cost-to-benefit ratios and vendor cost optimization.
• Proven ability to align, influence, and negotiate priorities with executive stakeholders, with a demonstrated skill to appropriately tailor and present complex information and product vision to a range of audiences.
• Experience guiding teams to conduct user research, workflow analyses, and process observation sessions to identify operational challenges and translate customer needs into comprehensive product requirement documents and strategic product decisions.
• Excellent understanding of the latest product management frameworks and theories, with practical experience establishing Agile, Scrum, or Lean operating models to drive iterative delivery across multiple squads.
• Strong problem-solving skills and informed decision-making abilities in a digital organization.
• Experienced in guiding teams to evaluate and implement emerging technology and AI/machine learning solutions based on fit, viability and trade-offs.
• Highly self-motivated, able to work autonomously under tight timelines, and adapt quickly and pivot effectively as business strategies, operational needs, and product priorities evolve.
• Bachelor’s degree and equivalent experience.

Nice To Haves

• Experience working in the Media and Entertainment industry, with direct exposure to the media supply chain.
• Deep understanding of Generative AI and machine learning models from a product development and integration perspective.
• Strong passion for and interest in Disney brands, storytelling, and the evolution of content experiences.
• Master of Business Administration (MBA) or an advanced technical degree preferred.

Responsibilities

• Directly manage, mentor, and develop a team of professional and experienced Product Managers.
• Ensure the product team maintains high technical and functional competence through strategic headcount planning, recruitment, career coaching, and performance management.
• Foster a collaborative, diverse, and psychologically safe environment that inspires passion, innovation, and a strong product-led culture across the organization.
• Set the long-term vision and roadmap for a portfolio of media-based Content Intelligence AI products providing capabilities to peer teams, and ensure these dovetail seamlessly through proactive, joint planning cycles and clear communication.
• Navigate highly complex, unstructured, or undefined problem spaces, establishing clear execution paths and deliver concrete, high-impact business outcomes.
• Champion user-centric innovation and establish team-wide standards and product management best practices to ensure products continuously deliver strategic business value.
• Shape the operating plans, structures, and execution frameworks to ensure the collection of products achieves significant, measurable business outcomes.
• Proactively identify, map, and de-risk cross-team dependencies, establishing shared milestones with peer teams to ensure synchronized product delivery.
• Manage organizational constraints; obtain, negotiate, and allocate product and engineering resources to meet strategic priorities.
• Guide the team in utilizing modern product discovery and analytical frameworks to evaluate complex operational challenges, balancing short-term execution with long-term portfolio scalability.
• Serve as an expert communicator and trusted advisor to executive leadership.
• Translate highly complex technical paradigms and AI concepts into simple, compelling narratives to secure executive buy-in, manage expectations, and resolve high-stakes conflicts independently.
• Represent the Content Intelligence product strategy to external industry partners and internal executive stakeholders alike, tailoring communication effectively from engineers up to C-suite leadership.
• Lead alignment across organizational boundaries and peer platform teams to successfully deliver complex, multi-team capital initiatives.
• Drive the business case development, cost/benefit analysis, and ROI modelling necessary to support and secure funding for major capital programs.
• Partner with technical leaders to maintain a comprehensive understanding of the technical landscape, ensuring that your team's product roadmap respects underlying architecture and technical constraints.

Benefits

• 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.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager