Lead Technical Program Manager - Machine Learning

This is not a remote role. You must be in the area or willing to relocate.

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:

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.

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.

• 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)

• 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…