Sr. Manager, Product & Engineering (Legal Technology)

Department Description

At Disney, we're storytellers. We make the impossible, possible. The Walt Disney Company (TWDC) 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.

Team Description

The Senior Manager, Product & Engineering (Legal Technology) is a responsible for leading a cross-functional team to deliver a comprehensive portfolio of products to our internal business stakeholders. This role encompasses all aspects of product management, program delivery, project management, software engineering, and technical operations. The Senior Manager will ensure that we are building and maintaining products that are aligned with our businesses' strategic priorities and the technology roadmap for the enterprise. This role will play a pivotal part in driving innovation, ensuring operational excellence, and fostering a collaborative environment to achieve our organizational goals.

We're looking for a seasoned technology leader with a strong foundation in product management, agile delivery, and stakeholder engagement. This role requires exceptional soft skills, including negotiation, persuasion, and a consultative approach to problem-solving. The ideal candidate can think strategically about the future of our products while remaining pragmatic and iterative in execution.

What You'll Do

Leadership & Strategic Execution

• Oversee the engineering, delivery, and support of a diverse portfolio of products, ensuring strategic alignment with business functions for our Legal & Global Affairs groups (including Antipiracy, eDiscovery, Legal Operations, Global Ethics & Compliance Management, Office of the Corporate Secretary, and Privacy)
• Lead complex, cross-functional teams to deliver technology solutions that drive business value and measurable outcomes
• Develop and execute product, project, and program roadmaps, ensuring alignment with business planning cycles and enterprise strategies
• Provide a holistic view of business capabilities, value streams, and end-to-end delivery, ensuring solutions align with organizational structure, business strategies, and stakeholder needs
• Develop and execute product roadmaps that balance innovation with operational excellence and enterprise scalability
• Build and maintain strong relationships with diverse stakeholders at all levels-from end-users to senior executives-to ensure strategic alignment and user-centric product development.
• Drive cross-functional collaboration across business, product, and engineering teams to achieve shared goals and innovation

Product & Engineering Delivery

• Drive the intake, demand management, and product roadmaps, ensuring alignment with user needs, business goals, and technical capabilities
• Own and lead the full lifecycle of large software development projects, ensuring successful execution across multiple teams and components
• Track and report on product and project performance, leveraging data-driven insights to drive continuous improvement
• Champion DevOps, CI/CD, and automation strategies to improve software delivery efficiency and reliability
• Ensure technical alignment with enterprise architecture standards (including TOGAF principles) and engineering best practices
• Oversee adherence to industry standards, regulations, and compliance requirements, ensuring all products and processes meet necessary governance criteria
• Serve as an escalation point for resolving complex issues, technical challenges, and critical business inquiries
• Advocate for customer-centric and user-driven development, ensuring business needs align with real-world usability and adoption
• Oversee technical operations, ensuring reliability, security, and maintainability of systems and platforms

Program Management & Agile Adoption

• Drive agile adoption and best practices, ensuring teams follow iterative development, backlog prioritization, value-driven delivery, and continuous feedback loops
• Establish clear success metrics and KPIs for product and project performance, ensuring data-driven decision-making
• Proactively identify potential risks in the product development lifecycle and implement mitigation strategies to ensure successful project delivery
• Work closely with product managers, product owners, software engineers, and domain architects to ensure alignment between business requirements, technical feasibility, and agile delivery principles

Financial & Vendor Management

• Oversee project and cost center budgets, providing accurate monthly forecasts and optimizing resource allocation
• Manage relationships with third-party vendors and partners, ensuring successful delivery execution and sustained product operations

People Leadership & Talent Development

• Manage, mentor, and develop a team of direct reports, providing career guidance, training, and structured development plans
• Identify and develop high-potential talent across the organization, fostering a culture of learning, growth, and performance excellence
• Foster a culture of ownership, accountability, and continuous learning, ensuring teams are engaged and motivated
• Act as a mentor and coach, helping emerging leaders develop into future roles within the organization

Key Attributes

Thinks Strategically

• Stays current on business trends and technological advances.
• Uses knowledge of the company's products and services to meet customer needs and financial targets.
• Identified key business opportunities and challenges.
• Examines issues from a broad perspective, considering impact beyond immediate scope.
• Makes sound business decisions that balance competing priorities.
• Able to see the "forest" as well as the individual "trees" - can articulate how specific situations relate to strategy or big picture problems

Builds Relationships

• Acts as the voice of the customer by understanding their business strategies and aligning business needs with the product strategy and roadmap.
• Interacts well with people who have different backgrounds and work styles.
• Resolves conflicts effectively.
• Service mindset with ability to facilitate "win-win" solutions, but not afraid to say "no".
• Manages the diverse needs of stakeholders.
• Engages colleagues across the organization to optimize performance.
• Manages strategic partnerships and executive-level relationships across a large enterprise and within the related industry

Communicates Effectively

• Conveys relevant information in a candid and timely manner.
• Listens and asks questions to ensure understanding.
• Tailors messages appropriately to the audience.
• Effectively persuades others to support ideas and plans.
• Provides the appropriate rational and content to drive commitment

Drives Results

• Keeps Commitments.
• Uses technology to facilitate better results.
• Analyzes problems and takes action to resolve.
• Achieves high levels of customer satisfaction.
• Holds self and others accountable to high standards, metrics and data driven
• Manages projects and resources to produce desired outcomes.
• Develops appropriate metrics to assess business performance.
• Plans, organizes and delegates effectively, to ensure focus on strategic activities.

Inspires Creativity and Innovation

• Conceives creative ideas to solve problems or meet objectives.
• Demonstrates a positive attitude with contagious enthusiasm.
• Challenges the status quo.
• Transfers ideas and success across boundaries.
• Facilitates the exchange of ideas and creation of new ones.
• Takes risks and manages them intelligently.
• Proactively looks for new opportunities.
• Sets product vision and creates enduring excitement about what is possible.
• Remains productive despite uncertainly.
• Demonstrates flexibility in response to changes.
• Supports new initiatives.

Champions Change

• Remains productive despite uncertainly.
• Demonstrates flexibility in response to changes.
• Supports new initiatives.
• Coaches others through change

Builds Teams

• Supports productivity and morale of the team.
• Strengthens others through mentoring and feedback.

• Recognizes and rewards the achievements of others.
• Broadly shares both accountability and responsibility.
• Creates "constructive discomfort" - encouraging performance beyond what others believe they can realize

Exhibits Professional Excellence

• Treats others with respect.
• Earns the trust of colleagues, partners and customers.
• Maintains composure under pressure.
• Strives for self-improvement. Learns from personal and organizational experiences.
• Shows consistency in words and actions.
• Sets a good example for others

Required Qualifications & Skills

Leadership & Strategic Execution

• 10+ years of experience in product management, solution architecture, software engineering, or technology operations -managing multiple complex products in a large, multi-national corporation with multiple business units
• 3+ years of direct people management experience, with progressive leadership responsibilities
• Deep understanding of legal operations, legal document management, legal workflow automation, eDiscovery, contract lifecycle management (CLM), legal hold, compliance, risk management, and IP management tools
• Knowledge of data privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA), litigation readiness, and compliance reporting workflows
• Previous experience to partnering with in-house counsel, compliance teams, privacy officers, and external legal partners
• Proven track record of leading high-impact product and technology initiatives, ensuring alignment with business goals and technology strategy
• Strong strategic thinking and execution skills, with the ability to balance long-term vision with pragmatic decision-making
• Experience managing cross-functional stakeholders, engaging with senior leadership, and driving business-aligned outcomes
• Experience leading matrixed teams, including product managers, technical architects, software engineers, operations, program managers, business analysts, and vendor partners

Technical Expertise & Engineering Leadership

• Deep understanding of software engineering and architecture principles, with experience delivering scalable, secure, and high-performance solutions
• Knowledge of TOGAF and enterprise architecture frameworks, with experience designing and implementing solutions aligned with TOGAF principles
• Proficiency in cloud technologies, SaaS platforms, DevOps, and CI/CD practices, with a strong focus on automation and operational excellence
• Hands-on experience with agile software development methodologies, ensuring high-quality software delivery at scale
• Ability to bridge technical and business domains, translating complex engineering concepts into clear business strategies
• Previous experience with complex e-mail, document, and record management services; with a preference for experience with NetDocuments
• Working knowledge of JavaScript, Java, REST, XML, HTML, and CSS
• Strong understanding of ITIL v3 (or later) and ITSM best practices to drive operational excellence and service management

Agile & Product Management Expertise

• Proven experience in Agile product management and iterative development methodologies, such as Scrum, Kanban, SAFe, or Lean
• Ability to define and manage product roadmaps, backlogs, and release planning, ensuring alignment with business objectives
• Experience leading and managing large, matrixed teams across product, engineering, and program functions
• Strong problem-solving and risk management skills, ensuring proactive identification and mitigation of project risks
• Data-driven mindset, using key performance indicators (KPIs) and analytics to track product and project performance and drive continuous improvement
• Experience working in an outsourced IT environment, managing vendor relationships and fostering a high-performing, collaborative ecosystem

Financial & Vendor Management

• Experience managing departmental and project budgets, ensuring financial accountability and resource optimization
• Strong background in vendor and partner management, ensuring successful collaboration and outsourced IT delivery
• Knowledge of contract negotiations, service-level agreements (SLAs), and governance models in a multi-vendor environment

Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement

• Exceptional ability to build strong relationships across business, technology, and executive leadership teams
• Strong communication, executive presentation, and storytelling skills, translating technical concepts into business language
• Ability to manage complex stakeholder landscapes, balancing competing priorities and driving alignment across cross-functional teams
• Experience working within matrixed organizational structures, ensuring effective collaboration and influence

People Leadership & Talent Development

• Demonstrated success creating a culture of trust, transparency, and belonging where teams feel safe to explore ideas, take risks, and grow
• Proven ability to mentor and develop individuals through mentoring, coaching, and regular feedback - with a focus on skills development and career progression
• Strong commitment to inclusive leadership practices that amplify diverse perspectives and foster open, honest collaboration
• Track record of cultivating high-performing, self-directed teams by clarifying expectations, encouraging experimentation, and celebrating learning over perfection
• Deep belief in leadership as a service to the team, paired with the ability to lead with curiosity, humility, and humor to keep teams energized, grounded, and connected

Preferred Qualifications

• Preference for Master of Business Administration (MBA) or other advanced degree in a related discipline
• TOGAF 9 certification, TOGAF Enterprise Architecture Practitioner, or TOGAF Enterprise Architecture Leader
• Other advanced, platform, or agile courses/certifications

Required Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Software, Electrical or Electronics Engineering, or comparable field of study, and/or equivalent work experience

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in Burbank, CA is $188,400 - $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.