Lead Technical Project Manager - Launch Readiness

At Disney, we are storytellers. We make the impossible possible. The Walt Disney Company is a world-class entertainment and technological leader. Our passion is to continuously envision new ways to move audiences around the world—a passion that remains our touchstone in an enterprise that stretches from streaming, 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 are 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. We drive competitive advantages by enhancing our consumer experiences, enabling business growth, and advancing operational excellence. 

About the role: 

The Lead Project Manager will be a part of the Core Systems & Platforms team within the ET. You will have the opportunity to support our finance transformation initiatives; SAP ECC transition to S/4 Hana and its technology conversion leveraged by all TWDC segments and lines of business including, DPEP, Studios, DMED and Corporate functions.  

In this role, you will facilitate all aspects for delivery execution into production from scope definition to execution. In addition, you will manage the implementation efforts for launch readiness and oversee coordination of production validations required by the business teams. This role may also lead one of many workstreams responsible for the successful execution of the overall program. 

Responsibilities:   

• This position will play a leadership role during command centers and hypercare for 100+ individuals for a given project. 

• Understands and uses high-quality, scalable and cost-effective technology solutions that meet global business requirements and conform to architectural designs and technology strategies. 

• Partners to create and handle technical roadmaps and helps set and lead technology strategy. 

• Technical decisions for complex development scenarios requiring transformation from existing processes. 

• Own/facilitate the scrum ceremonies. 

• Launch planning sessions focused on critical technical and business milestones for pre-launch and developing day of launch tasks to track critical implementation milestones and dependencies. Including: writing and prioritize Epics, Technical User Stories and Tasks in a requirements repository with traceability to test cases in a testing repository. 

• Understanding interdependencies and impacts to other cast members work streams. 

• Drive for on-time delivery of all aspects of projects within the Finance Transformation Program. Consistently evaluate and improve the project plan, course correct for incoming/new prioritization and dependencies. 

• Oversees the requirements process; ensures traceability of high-level requirements throughout the program.  Participates in data analysis activities as needed. 

• Leads or participates in the assessment of potential new opportunities, analyzing scope at a high-level and work with Business, Technology or Functional managers to agree on project approach, business cases, risk assessments, funding requirements, and resource/capability needs. 

• Create detailed plans that will coordinate thousands of tasks to successfully deploy complex projects 

• Understand the impacts of delays and clearly define the critical path for project go live. 

• Make recommendations on task that can be performed in parallel to reduce overall business impact 

• Accountable for accurate forecasting, tracking and adherence to program budgets. Understand and articulate challenges, assumptions, timelines and expenses across the projects and at the program level. 

• Manages project variance and root cause analysis, develops risk mitigation / issue management plans related to the go live efforts with the objective to meet the financial targets. 

• Quickly response to technical impairments or outages immediately during launch and hypercare. 

• Ensures effective, proactive and open communications, horizontally and vertically, in order to achieve transparency and clarity of program goals, progress and issues. 

• Supports and actively works to create a healthy work team environment- bringing measured response along with transparency and discipline to active discussions and communications. 

• Coordinate and facilitate on-boarding requirements for all finance integrations in all phases of the program. 

Qualifications: 

• Minimum of 7 years in Technology roles for large/enterprise software companies including financial, technical and business stakeholder executive facilitation. 

• Strong understanding of data governance and data messaging platforms including Cloud. 

• Minimum of 5 years’ experience with SAP ECC. 

• Minimum of 5 years’ experience understanding the technical deployment of SAP products. 

• Experience with Charm and/or SAP Transport methodology. 

• Proven experience in managing complex technical projects. 

• Experience with SAP environment readiness. 

• Experience working with SAP basis teams. 

• Experience with large data ERPs and understanding the performance impacts when writing code. 

• Experience writing ABAP programming language on HANA a plus. 

• Experience with Fiori and SAP Enterprise Portal a plus. 

• Experience with SAP BW and SAP BCS a plus. 

Strong understanding and experience with: 

• Experienced in “Data” project managements using Agile, Iterative and/or Waterfall SDLC Methodologies. 

• Experienced in extracting and documenting data and analytic requirements, working across all levels of users from senior executives to analysts. 

• Track record of taking ownership and driving results. 

• Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills with strong writing and speaking skills. 

• Ability to think both strategically and tactically with good attention to detail. 

• Demonstrated ability to execute delivery on large programs with multiple projects - prioritization, planning and task delegation. 

• Strong program/project financial management skills including forecasting. 

• Experience with resource allocation tracking across program/projects. 

• Proven experience in managing complex technical projects with complexity across stakeholders, multi-functional teams, requirements, and implementations. 

• Ability to think logically, communicate clearly, and be well organized. 

Education: 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering, or a related STEM field, or equivalent professional experience 

• Masters in a related field a plus.