Job Description
About the Role & Team:
Walt Disney Imagineering is the creative force that imagines, designs, and brings to life all Disney theme parks, resorts, attractions, and cruise ships worldwide. Working across a spectrum of disciplines that range from creative and conceptual to scientific and technical, Imagineers blend an innovative mixture of storytelling, art, science, and technology to create immersive experiences, memorable destinations, and innovative entertainment for families around the globe.
Nearly every project at Walt Disney Imagineering includes a first-of-its-kind. Innovation is in our DNA, and Imagineers constantly push the boundaries of technology and invent new goals as well as the solutions to achieve them. As Imagineers, one of our greatest rewards is knowing that the experiences and environments we create inspire others. The diversity of expertise at Imagineering makes us uniquely capable of influencing positive change in our communities and around the world. And knowing that we have helped make a difference is incredibly fulfilling and inspiring for all of us.
The systems and workflows that support project estimating, budgeting, and scope definition are foundational to how Imagineering plans, aligns, and delivers world-class experiences. We’re looking for a passionate, strategic product leader to drive products dedicated to how WDI estimates, budgets, defines, structures, and manages the scope of our projects across the full lifecycle of design and delivery.
This Product Manager, Principal will drive and deliver software products, functions, and workflows for our internally used Imagineering product portfolio focused on estimating and scope management. This individual will be responsible for shepherding product investments across both buy and build solutions, working alongside product peers, technical program managers, software engineers, designers, estimators, project managers, production teams, and executive stakeholders. This role will help shape the future of how WDI models project cost, develops estimating confidence, structures scope, catalogs scope elements, and connects scope data from the macro level of experience definition down to the micro level of individual bought and fabricated components. This role will also help identify where AI can responsibly improve estimating quality, workflow speed, data usability, and decision support across these domains.
We need someone who can communicate a clear product vision, deeply understand the operational realities of project design, execution, and delivery, and create strong partnerships that make these systems useful, scalable, and trusted within our creative-first business.
You will report to the Product Executive – WDI Apps.
This is a Full-Time role.
What You Will Do:
- Drive product direction and implementation for estimating and scope management products within Imagineering, including capabilities that leverage AI to improve speed, insight, and decision support.
- Define product strategy for systems and workflows that support estimating, budgeting, forecasting, scope generation, scope cataloging, scope change management, and AI-assisted analysis across project phases.
- Advocate as the voice of the Imagineer, estimator, planner, and delivery team member, placing grounded problem-solving before solutioning and exemplifying WDI’s core design and delivery principles.
- Partner with stakeholders across estimating, project management, production, engineering, design, sourcing, finance, and technology to identify needs, pain points, dependencies, and opportunities for transformation, including where AI can augment workflows in practical and trusted ways.
- Draft product requirements, user research, user stories, process models, taxonomies, mockups, product memos, presentations, roadmaps, and other pertinent strategy materials.
- Guide product development for systems that define and manage project scope from high-level experience structures through detailed assemblies, systems, parts, packages, and fabricated or procured components, including AI-enabled approaches to classification, structuring, retrieval, and analysis.
- Evaluate and lead buy-versus-build product decisions, helping identify where market solutions can accelerate value and where custom functionality, data models, or AI-enabled workflows are required to meet unique WDI needs.
- Collaborate with software engineering, product design, technical program management, finance, sourcing, legal, and data partners to deliver product capabilities that are reliable, usable, scalable, and aligned to responsible AI practices.
- Present product vision, roadmap direction, demos, and delivery progress to senior leadership and key stakeholders, building alignment and confidence around strategic investments in estimating and scope management platforms.
- Drive the annual investment and funding strategy for product functions and features within the estimating and scope management portfolio, including capabilities that improve automation, prediction, and decision-making through AI.
Required Qualifications:
- 10+ years of software product management experience
- Expertise with complex enterprise product ecosystems and operational workflows, particularly those supporting planning, costing, delivery, or systems of record.
- Expertise with 0–1 software development. You can craft clarity, starting from the blank page, while also evolving existing tools and workflows over time.
- Excellent communication skills: written, verbal, and presentational. You can communicate across mediums and across levels of the organization.
- Demonstrated ability to translate highly complex business processes into clear product direction, requirements, and phased delivery plans.
- Strong cross-functional leadership and stakeholder management skills, with experience aligning technical teams and business operators around shared outcomes.
- Experience evaluating where automation, intelligence, or AI can meaningfully improve user workflows, data interpretation, or decision-making in enterprise software environments.
- Passion for solving problems within creative and entertainment cultures. You love the output of what we do: design and deliver immersive, world-class experiences.
- Desire to work on internal technologies used by Imagineers (not consumer-facing). You care deeply about the craft, rigor, and coordination required behind the scenes.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience with estimating, budgeting, cost modeling, forecasting, or financial planning systems in capital project, construction, manufacturing, design, or related environments.
- Experience with product domains related to scope management, configuration management, bill of materials, asset hierarchies, package planning, or parts and component tracking.
- Recent experience with AI-enabled product capabilities, user patterns, or enterprise AI workflows, especially those related to prediction, classification, summarization, search, recommendation, or decision support.
- Experience evaluating and implementing both commercial software platforms and custom-built internal tools.
- Familiarity with project delivery, design development, fabrication, procurement, and installation workflows.
- Experience with data models, taxonomies, and structured information systems used to organize complex project scope.
- Experience with microservice ecosystems and component-based web apps.
Education:
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, media management, or an engineering or science discipline required, or equivalent experience.
Master’s degree preferred.
Additional Information:
Benefits and Perks: Disney offers a rewards package to help you live your best life. This includes health and savings benefits, educational opportunities and special extras that only Disney can provide. Learn more about our benefits and perks at https://jobs.disneycareers.com/benefits.
#DXMedia
#LI-SS3
