Principal Technical Project Manager

Principal Technical Project Manager 

About the Role & Team

“We Power the Magic!” That’s our motto at Disney Experiences - Technology & Digital. Our team creates world-class immersive digital experiences for the Company’s premier vacation brands including Disney’s Parks & Resorts worldwide, Disney Cruise Line, Aulani, A Disney Resort & Spa, and Disney Vacation Club.

The DX Technology & Digital team is responsible for the end-to-end digital and physical Guest experience for all technology & digital-led initiatives across the Attractions & Entertainment, Food & Beverage, Resorts & Transportation, and Merchandise lines of business as well as other initiatives including the MyDisneyExperience and Hey, Disney!

The Principal Technical Project Manager is responsible for all aspects of project management for large programs and projects. This role will report to the Senior Manager, Technology Project Management within the 3PO team (Portfolio, Program, and Project Organization).

What You Will Do

• Act as a key leader for a high-priority, multi-site strategic program

  • Confidently lead and drive cross-functional projects, and individual project tracks through full delivery life cycle ensuring project is delivered timely and on-budget.

  • Work with engineering teams, including Software Engineers, Product Managers, Architects, and leadership to establish processes across all program areas that will ensure success on high priority business initiatives and improve efficiency.

  • Lead and direct more junior technical project managers in the execution of their work during the project lifecycle

  • Work with business leaders and key stakeholders to support engineering efforts for projects within a program

• Project Leadership, Planning and Execution

  • Lead and manage large-scale, complex programs and/or projects, ensuring seamless collaboration across various teams and workstreams.

  • Anticipate risks and develop mitigation plans

  • Maintain accurate project documentation, including: RAID log, scope, project plans, budget, etc.

  • Articulate a technical solution into business strategy and understand the big picture as it relates to business value.

• Financial Management

  • Reconcile project actuals and determine forecast course corrections​

  • Achieve a detailed understanding of how project is billed, including changes to forecast​

  • Maintain up-to-date budget documentation​

  • Proactively communicate forecast budget or changes to leadership

• Project Resource Management

  • Align resource capacity maps to project plans accounting for cross-project dependencies​

  • Drive integration with resource managers, delivery managers and leadership​

  • Monitor resource capacity, balancing work and budget (over/under)​

• Risk Management & Problem Solving

  • Manage scope changes and variances, assess impact to timeline and budget, and communicate​

  • Proactively collaborate and identify solutions to as unexpected issues arise to maintain progress​

  • Provide transparent communication of risks, issues, dependencies, decisions, scope change, impacts and solutions

• Stakeholder Communication & Management

  • Drive stakeholder coordination and engagement​ to ensure understanding of project requirements, scope, goals, priorities and timelines. ​

  • Engage stakeholders to ensure decision and change management processes are followed

  • Create and own communication plan & cadence of project meetings​

  • Manage stakeholder expectations​, build strong relationships and trust 

• Transparent Project Reporting

  • Prepare and facilitate project status presentations, dashboards, risk assessments and data-driven storytelling for leadership and executives

  • Enable data-driven storytelling with Data visualization​

  • Prepare and distribute weekly status updates​

  • Maintain meeting minutes, including purpose, agenda and deliverables and progress towards goals/ milestones​

  • Identify health / progress metrics​

Required Qualifications & Skills

• Minimum of 10 years of technical project/program management experience working with technical teams developing enterprise class solutions

• Technical aptitude:

  • Understanding of Cloud, APIs, services, database technologies, technologist roles and responsibilities, capabilities & platform dependencies, software development lifecycle, engineering and/or product development

  • Influence and negotiation, communication, professional maturity & organizational savvy, relationship building, dependency mapping

  • Hands-on experience with practices such as Agile, Lean, Kanban, Waterfall as well as extensive experience with pragmatic blending of styles to facilitate collaboration and delivery

  • Deep understanding of Agile technical practices, DevOps and testing concepts (CI/CD, TDD)

  • Significant experience in coaching and mentoring teams on project management practices including Agile, Lean, Kanban, Waterfall

  • Excellent ability to understand architectural and technical aspects of projects

  • Excellent organizational, communication (written and verbal) and time management skills with attention to detail

  • Experience managing large budgets

• Tools:

  • Office productivity software, including Microsoft suite, Keynote, Smartsheet,

  • Project management software, including MyPPM (Clarity), MyJira

• Reporting tools, including Tableau, PowerBI

Preferred Qualifications

• Technical project management experience in Commerce or a related field

• Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification

• Experience in supporting large-scale, global software development programs

• Agile Certifications ie CSM; ACP; CPO; SAFe; LeSS

Education

• Bachelor’s degree and/or equivalent work experience