Lead Technical Program Manager - Machine Learning

Job Summary:

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

Department/Group Overview:

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:

1. Data Science / ML / AI- productizing models and interfaces

2. Advanced Analytics - causal marketing & audience research

3. Forecasting - accurate baselines / guidance for content performance

4. Metadata - key content / audience metadata that power research

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.

Job Summary:

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.

Responsibilities

* 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

Responsibilities and Duties of the Role:

* 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).

Required Education, Experience/Skills/Training:

Basic Qualifications:

* 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…