Sr Manager Product Management

Department/Group Overview:

Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology

Technology is at the heart of Disney’s past, present, and future. Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is a global organization of engineers, product developers, designers, technologists, data scientists, and more – all working to build and advance the technological backbone for Disney’s media business globally.

The team marries technology with creativity to build world-class products, enhance storytelling, and drive velocity, innovation, and scalability for our businesses. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers. We work with every part of The Walt Disney Company’s media portfolio to advance the technological foundation and consumer media touch points serving millions of people around the world. 

Here are a few reasons why we think you’d love working here:

1. Building the future of Disney’s media: Our Technologists are designing and building the products and platforms that will power our media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come.

2. Reach, Scale & Impact: More than ever, Disney’s technology and products serve as a signature doorway for fans' connections with the company’s brands and stories. Disney+. Hulu. ESPN. ABC. ABC News…and many more. These products and brands – and the unmatched stories, storytellers, and events they carry – matter to millions of people globally. 

3. Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and solve complex and distinctive technical problems.

Content Platforms & Operations is responsible for the development and ongoing advancement of the technical and operational functions driving the worldwide distribution and monetization of Disney’s linear networks and theatrical content. This includes Disney’s media supply chain and storage, network and theatrical distribution operations, media localization, network transmission and origination, and more. The global team also plays a critical role as the primary collaboration point for Product & Technology with Disney’s EMEA, APAC, and LATAM regional business teams.

Job Summary:

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.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

People Leadership, Talent & Culture Development

• 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.

Portfolio Vision & Product Strategy

• 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.

Operational Execution & Resource Allocation

• 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.

Executive Stakeholder Management & Communication

• 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.

Cross-Portfolio Governance & Capital Programs

• 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.

Basic 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.

Preferred requirements:

You don’t need to meet all of these, but it would be advantageous to meet one or more.

• 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.

Education:

• Bachelor’s degree and equivalent experience.
• Master of Business Administration (MBA) or an advanced technical degree preferred.

The hiring range for this position in Los Angeles is $188,400 to $252,600 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.