Principal AI Product Manager

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.

Disney Experiences Technology seeks a Principal Product Manager to lead the product vision and technical strategy for an agentic, AI powered discovery experience across US Parks web and app touchpoints. You will drive end-to-end outcomes for an AI discovery agent, including data & content architecture, retrieval strategies, safety/guardrails, and evaluation frameworks – and drive cross functional execution with other product teams, engineering, data, content and design.

This is a senior individual contributor role for a hands-on product leader who can translate guest value into technical architecture (e.g., schemas, ontologies, embeddings, vector retrieval, model/tool orchestration) and bring them to life at scale. The ideal candidate is highly analytical and collaborative, thrives in a complex matrix environment while wearing multiple hats, and can work with autonomy and accountability. They excel at synthesizing diverse technologies, data sources, and business capabilities into intuitive, high-quality AI-powered products that guests love, balancing innovation with simplicity to deliver measurable impact.  

What you will do:

Technical Product Leadership

• Lead the product vision for the Discovery Agent by shaping how it understands, organizes, and leverages Disney’s content and data to deliver clear, helpful, and trustworthy guest experiences.
• Define the frameworks and principles that guide how information is structured, connected, and maintained, ensuring the agent can provide accurate, contextual answers and meaningful comparisons.
• Establish expectations for quality, responsiveness, and reliability across AI-driven experiences, and partner with engineering and data teams to create the visibility and feedback loops needed to continuously monitor performance and improve system behavior over time.

Data & Content Architecture for AI Systems

• Shape the overarching approach for how Disney’s content and data are organized, governed, and prepared to support AI‑driven guest experiences.
• Define the standards and principles that ensure information is accurate, current, and aligned across teams, enabling the Discovery Agent to deliver trustworthy, context‑aware responses.
• Partner with data, content, and platform teams to ensure Disney’s vast content ecosystem is structured and managed in ways that improve discoverability, maintain quality, and unlock new AI‑powered capabilities.
• Champion the importance of content readiness, governance, and clarity, establishing expectations that help teams produce AI‑compatible content and reduce operational overhead.
• Guide decisions about when and how different types of data or content (structured, unstructured, real‑time, editorial, etc.) should power guest experiences, balancing precision, scalability, and operational sustainability.

Execution & Delivery at Scale

• Translate long‑term strategy into a clear, phased roadmap that aligns teams around shared outcomes and provides meaningful visibility into how the Discovery Agent evolves over time.
• Guide cross‑functional partners toward effective execution by clarifying priorities, shaping decision‑making frameworks, and ensuring teams understand the “why” behind what they’re building.
• Establish the expectations, measures, and feedback loops needed to assess product performance, enabling teams to learn quickly, adapt confidently, and continuously raise the bar on quality and reliability.
• Foster strong alignment across products, design, engineering, data, content, and operations, helping teams navigate trade‑offs and maintain momentum in a complex, fast‑moving environment.
• Ensuring delivery happens at scale by reinforcing principles of clarity, focus, and accountability, while championing a culture of iterative improvement and operational excellence.

Safety, Compliance, and Responsible AI

• Champion a responsible approach to AI by ensuring the Discovery Agent aligns with Disney’s standards for safety, transparency, and guest trust.
• Partner with legal, privacy, and trust & safety teams to define the principles that guide appropriate use, clarity of communication, and responsible handling of sensitive topics.
• Set high‑level guardrails that shape the agent’s boundaries and behavior, ensuring interactions remain safe, respectful, and aligned with guest expectations.

Collaboration & Leadership

• Influence and align a wide range of technical, creative, and business partners around a shared vision for AI‑powered guest experiences.
• Strengthen cross‑functional decision‑making by clarifying trade‑offs and helping teams balance innovation, feasibility, and guest simplicity.
• Contribute to organizational growth by sharing frameworks, documentation, and strategic thinking that elevate product quality across teams, without direct people management.
• Partner with marketing, operations, and guest care teams to ensure AI‑driven experiences are introduced thoughtfully, with clear communication and smooth change management.

Systems Thinking & User Experience

• Apply a system-level mindset to understand how the Discovery Agent fits within the broader ecosystem of guest experiences, ensuring AI capabilities integrate seamlessly across products, platforms, and operational workflows.
• Connect technical decisions to end‑to‑end guest journeys, anticipating upstream and downstream impacts and guiding teams toward solutions that enhance coherence, predictability, and overall experience quality.
• Partner closely with design, content, engineering, and data teams to champion intuitive, human‑centered interactions, ensuring the agent’s behavior reflects user intent, reduces friction, and builds trust.
• Translate complex system behavior into clear UX patterns that help guests understand what the agent can do, how to interact with it effectively, and how to navigate AI‑driven experiences with confidence.
• Advocate for scalable, reusable experience frameworks that support consistency across touchpoints, while enabling innovation and flexibility as the Discovery Agent evolves.

Market & Innovation

• Maintain a forward‑looking perspective on advancements in AI, emerging technologies, and shifts in travel and digital commerce.
• Identify meaningful opportunities to extend the Discovery Agent’s role across the guest journey – from early inspiration through planning, booking, and post‑visit engagement.
• Bring outside insights into product strategy to reinforce Disney’s leadership in delivering intuitive, intelligent, and future‑ready guest experiences.

Required Qualifications & Skills:

• 10+ years in product management with 5+ years building ML/AI‑powered consumer experiences (search, recommendations, assistants, or conversational agents) at scale.
• Demonstrated ownership of the data/content architecture underpinning an AI product (schemas/ontologies, embeddings/vector stores, retrieval design, and data governance).
• Deep understanding of agent frameworks, tool/function orchestration, prompt patterns, and evaluation/observability (golden sets, offline/online metrics, human‑in‑the‑loop).
• Fluency collaborating on system design with engineers and data/ML partners; able to discuss tradeoffs in latency, throughput, cost, and safety.
• Excellence in written strategy (north stars, tenets, decision docs) and the ability to translate technical concepts into guest‑friendly experiences.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in travel/leisure or e‑commerce (inventory, pricing, availability, packaging) and complex comparison use cases.
• Background in content management systems, knowledge graphs, feature/metrics stores, or privacy‑by‑design architectures for consumer AI.
• Familiarity with model evaluation & fine‑tuning pipelines, safety taxonomies, red‑teaming, and risk controls.

Education:

• Bachelors in CS/HCI/related field (or equivalent); Master’s preferred.

#DISNEYTECH

The hiring range for this position in California is $185,000-$220,000 per year and Washington is $195,000-$230,000 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.