Overview:

At Disney, we’re storytellers. We make the impossible, possible. The Walt Disney Company is a world-class entertainment and technological leader. Walt’s passion was to continuously envision new ways to move audiences around the world—a passion that remains our touchstone in an enterprise that stretches from theme parks, resorts and a cruise line to sports, news, movies and a variety of other businesses. Uniting each endeavor is a commitment to creating and delivering unforgettable experiences — and we’re constantly looking for new ways to enhance these exciting experiences.

The Enterprise Technology mission is to deliver technology solutions that align to business strategies while enabling enterprise efficiency and promoting cross-company collaborative innovation. Our group drives competitive advantage by enhancing our consumer experiences, enabling business growth, and advancing operational excellence.

About the role:

The Program Manager works in a dynamic, collaborative environment and reports to the Enterprise Technology Director, Technical Program Management (Services & Platforms) and may support technology programs or projects across the ETech Services & Platforms team, with initial focus on Continuous Improvement and Connected Experiences.

• Managing enterprise-level programs and/or multiple projects within the Disney Enterprise Technology portfolio.

• Work closely with various project owners to define the project team and assign responsibilities.

• Responsible for developing a consolidated view of the program, and for program deliverables including calendars, cross-project dependencies, risk analysis, stakeholder coordination and regular communication of status.

• Guiding process development at a Program team level, and managing high-risk, high-impact, strategic projects across a multi-disciplinary, multi-function group of technologists and business professionals.

• Experience communicating across audiences, effectively defining, and utilizing escalation paths, and updating executive stakeholders.

Job Responsibilities:

Program and Project Management Delivery:

• Accountable for driving execution and delivery of moderately complex projects or programs from start to finish.

• Demonstrates clear understanding of the program’s vision, objectives, scale, and scope of work, expected outcomes, business value and impact, timelines, roadmaps, resource level requirements.

• Establishes strong partnerships and engagement with Program or project stakeholders.

• Create full-scale master program and project schedules and communication plans consisting of multiple projects or components.

• Creates governance practices and protocols to control and monitor the program/projects.

• Ensure proactive scheduling of key deliverables, milestones, and deliverable tasks.

• Provides management oversight, aligns, and leads cross-functional and international project teams to ensure critical day-to-day program/project deliverables progress forward to deliver specified requirements, objectives, and value.

• Prepares program/project status reports to demonstrate project overall health, key performance indicator (KPI), risk, issues, accomplishments, next steps, and escalation requests.

• Proactively identifies and resolves issues and risks on programs/projects to meet program commitments. Ensures create problem solving and critical thinking.

• Ability to consolidate details and provide executive level status presentations and dashboards in a consumable and organized fashion.

• Working knowledge of the integrated systems lifecycle development utilizing different – and sometimes – multiple development models (e.g., agile, waterfall, hybrid, etc.)

• Demonstrates organizing teams through Agile ceremonies (e.g., product backlog refinement, preplanning, planning, daily standups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives).

• Manages project document repositories and ensures are maintained / updated.

• Creates data visualization elements to provide a graphic demonstration of project analytics and metrics.

• Proven facilitator that can lead project meetings and workshops driving commitments, accountability, and deliverables.

• Identifies gaps in the project team’s accountability and ownership of deliverables.

• Fosters a team environment of self-organization, retrospect to learn and adapt with the goal of delivering the highest value to our guests and cast.

Financial Management

• Responsible for finance/budget responsibilities for programs of high complexity and large budgets (<$60M).

• Analyzes, measures, and recognizes the financial impact of various project actions, participate in analyzing and using financial data to identify key project issues, and maintains budget tracking and monitors budget expenditures.

• Establish program and project financial forecasts including resource plans and other expense plans.

Communication and Organizational Change Management

• Leads with practicality and wisdom during competing priorities and diverse personalities. Operates as an independent and dynamic program leader. Highly adept at influencing without direct authority

• Facilitates Program update and project team meetings effectively, ensuring the desired outcomes are achieved.

• Distributes timely and effective Program or project meeting updates and call to action updates across project teams.

• Demonstrates effective communication skills to facilitate project-related conversations with technology senior leaders/managers/directors and service owners alike and driving tasks and project dependencies to completion across multiple supporting teams.

• Escalates need for guidance and support to direct manager effectively.

• Ensures principals of Organizational Change Management such as measuring engagement, ensuring adoption, and providing sustainment updates.

• Understanding and managing the impact of change on employees and the organization. Secure employee commitment (including process managers) for proactive change.

Technical Depth

• Demonstrated understanding of technical project delivery with a focus on Agile delivery and Agile delivery tools such as Jira, Rally, VersionOne, etc.

• End-user experience and a moderate level of competency in the use of modern program and project management tools, such as Clarity, Smartsheet, JIRA, MS Project on the Web, Confluence, Apptio, SharePoint/Microsoft Teams, ServiceNow, PPM, etc.

• Proficiency with a wide range of productivity tools, including collaboration software (e.g., Slack, MS Teams), and standard MS Office tools (e.g., Outlook Online, OneDrive).

• Strong Technical services working knowledge in one or more domains with the ability to flex across other domains, including continuous improvement, six sigma, conference room technologies & buildout / operations, application delivery, email/messaging platforms, video and voice solutions deployed at scale, workplace devices, support, and authentication, network and infrastructure, datacenter migration, cloud migration.

• Ability to draft technical requirements (i.e., for data and metrics implementation, continuous improvement implementation, and connected experiences implementation)

Vendor Management and International Team Partnership

• Oversees and aligns with third party vendor and partners with international teams to ensure deliverables are complete in a timely manner.

• Demonstrate flexibility to align with international time zones, as necessary.

• Evaluates and harmonize vendor’s timelines/schedules and cross-project dependencies to ensure alignment with overall program objectives.

• Drives escalations to remediate risks/blockers impeding vendor’s forward progression, as necessary.

Continuous Improvement

• Develop and implement strategies to address identified issues, tools, techniques, and methodologies like Lean, Six Sigma, and Kaizen. Clearly define program objectives, scope, and success criteria Develop and measure standard metrics to track progress. Monitor and report on the effectiveness of implemented changes.

• Lead and manage improvement projects, ensuring they are completed on time and within budget. 

• Provide training and mentorship to employees on continuous improvement methodologies and tools. 

• Track the performance of implemented improvements and adjust strategies as needed to ensure continued effectiveness. 

• Foster a culture where employees are encouraged to identify and implement improvements, leading to a more proactive and innovative organization. 

Qualifications:

• A minimum of 5 years of applicable program management experience in a technology environment, preferably for a large company.

• A minimum of 1 years experience serving in a leadership role on a small to mid-sized Agile development team that was diligently applying Scrum principles, practices, and theory.

• A minimum of 3 years experience in leading technology, multidisciplinary efforts across a large-scale matrix organization

• Demonstrates inclusive leadership that embraces diversity.

• Excellent organizational, communication, and time management skills

• Demonstrates ability to develop teams, mentor staff.

• Analyzing data to identify trends, patterns, and root causes of problems.

• Effectively communicating ideas, leading teams, and helping drive change within the organization.

Education:

• A BA/BS in business, computer science preferred or other technical field or appropriate work experience.

Licenses / Training (e.g., professional certifications):

• PMI or Scrum Alliance (or similar) certifications in Program Manager, Project Manager, or Scrum Master competencies are preferred.

• Six Sigma certification preferred.

The hiring range for this position in Burbank, California is $126,400 to $169,500 per year and in Seattle, WA $132,500 to $177,600 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.