Senior Staff Technical Program Manager

Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), a premier global media and entertainment company, offers audiences the world's most differentiated and complete portfolio of content, brands, and franchises across television, film, streaming, and gaming. The new company combines WarnerMedia's premium entertainment, sports, and news assets with Discovery's leading non-fiction and international entertainment and sports businesses. 

For more information, please visit www.wbd.com. 

DTC’s Operational Excellence teams are responsible for driving a culture of continuous improvement across the WBD Engineering community to ensure smooth efficient operation and the highest customer satisfaction. We are the team responsible for identifying and optimizing the video quality of experience (QoE) for all video streaming products and platforms at Warner Bros. Discovery.

Our objective is to build engineering solutions that enable us to quickly and efficiently distinguish signal from noise, capture trending watch experience issues in VOD and LIVE streaming solutions, and drive prioritization to restore the customer experience as soon as possible with minimal handoffs.  

The right candidate is passionate about advancing the video streaming consumer experience and possesses a strong program management background, with a demonstrated ability to not be hindered by ambiguity or competing priorities. As a Sr. Staff Technical Program Manager, you will anticipate bottlenecks, recognize the most impactful issues to the watch experience, generate appropriate visibility with the senior-most leadership at WBD, negotiate, prioritize, and track mitigation and resolution of trending problems identified by QoE analysts. Maturity, high judgment, negotiation skills, ability to influence, analytical talent and leadership are essential to success in this role.  

Accountability and Expectations: 

• Understand the flow of Video Quality of Experience (QoE) data from client emission to backend business intelligence systems, and gain subject-matter expertise in metrics calculations. 

• You will drive cross-cutting strategic initiatives and maintain a portfolio view of the roadmap, priorities, KPIs, and mechanisms for all Video QoE team deliverables.  

• You are passionate about leading by influence. You have a demonstrated ability to establish a vision and to execute on it. You strive to identify roadblocks before they occur. 

• Facilitate seamless communication and collaboration between the Video Engineering teams, Product and other engineering teams, and stakeholders.  

• Guide and organize development teams to sustain high quality watch experiences that delight customers and are in line with organizational goals and OKRs.  

• You have experience discovering and managing dependencies across teams and third-party partners.  

• Build and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders, team members, and external partners. Act as a trusted advisor to the Video QoE team and provide guidance on operational matters.    

• Stay up to date with industry best practices and emerging trends in the video streaming space.  

• Identify and implement strategies to improve team efficiency in resolving issues and effectiveness of providing support to Video Engineering teams, ensuring smooth coordination between various teams involved in the QoE lifecycle.  

• You're able to take an ambiguous problem statement related to your subject-matter area to drive actionable outcomes.   

• An autonomous representative for your area, you play a leadership role in the organization: teams look to you for advice on technical and business issues.   

• Your written and verbal communication skills are exemplary, concise and to the point, making you the initial point of contact for business and technical Stakeholders. You are skilled at clearly articulating business impact and technical constraints tailored to the audience. 

• Communicate how deviations in QoE metrics impact product-level goals, and how the team's work impacts the success or failure of the organizational unit. 

• Create problem statements and move from those to appropriate and data driven proposals, recommendations, and solutions; then drive alignment across cross-functional stakeholders. 

Experiences and Skills: 

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or equivalent engineering background. 

• Minimum 10 years of proven experience in business operations, technical program and project management, or a similar role supporting product management teams. 

• You have worked directly with video or content systems and have experience to understand and identify issues in quality of experience measures.  

• You are a data/analytics person who can understand and document how data generated in production systems makes its way downstream into business intelligence systems. 

• Independently driven with high sense of ownership, urgency, and proven ability to lead and influence. 

• Proficiency in system architecture, design, and data flow structures. 

• Demonstrated capability for problem-solving, data-backed decision-making, sound judgment and assertiveness, and strong relationship-building and interpersonal skills.  

• You are highly adaptable to changing business need and are able to drive change across multiple disciplines within the engineering and operations world.   

• Proven track record to accurately showcase the current state, risks, and accomplishments for an enterprise-wide program driven by multiple teams. 

• Ability to prioritize across multiple competing projects and drive decision-making across teams. 

• Strong organizational skills, ensuring projects stay on schedule for yourself and your team. You don't leave success up to chance but instead exhibit systems thinking. 

• You manage cross-functional communication to ensure that all business and technical stakeholder’s needs are aligned. 

• Experience collaborating in hybrid remote/in-office teams across multiple regions and time zones. 

• Ability to learn new development tools and productivity tools in order to continuously improve effectiveness. 

• Strong understanding and experience with development methodologies, including waterfall and agile. 

• Experience with agile development methodologies and project management tools such as  
  JIRA, Confluence, Smart Sheets etc is highly preferable.