Lead Product Designer - Sports Design (ESPN)

Lead Product Designer – Sports Design (ESPN) 

About the Role & Team 

On any given day at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, we’re reimagining ways to create magical viewing experiences for the world’s most beloved stories while also redefining Disney’s media business for the future. Whether that’s evolving our streaming and digital products in new and immersive ways, powering worldwide advertising and distribution to maximize flexibility and efficiency, or delivering Disney’s unmatched entertainment and sports content, every day is a moment to make a difference to partners and to hundreds of millions of people around the world! 

A few reasons why we think you’d love working here:  

• Building the future of Disney’s Sports and Entertainment ESPN business: DE&E Technologists are designing and building the experiences that will power ESPN’s media, advertising, and distribution businesses.  

• Reach and Scale: The products and platforms this group builds and operates delight millions of consumers every minute of every day – ESPN Streaming, ESPN+, ESPN digital products and much more.  

• Innovation: We develop and execute groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms and enhance how audiences experience sports, entertainment & news.  

About The Team  

The Disney Entertainment & ESPN (DE&E) Technology Design team thinks beyond what is possible today. They discover, disrupt, and chart a course to where our fans and consumers will be next. Design brings the Disney magic to life by building digital customer experiences via the entire portfolio of both consumer-facing products and internal products and tooling. This includes Sports, Entertainment, News, Streaming and Enterprise Products and Experiences.  

Disney Entertainment & ESPN’s Product Design team is seeking a Lead Product Designer who will be an exceptional role model to our growing team. You'll guide and mentor a hardworking design team, focused on crafting intuitive and sophisticated human-centric experiences for the ESPN Digital’s stats and scores experiences and sports betting products. The right person for this role must have experience in developing both comprehensive and future-forward experiences and a proven ability to inspire and mentor designers to push the boundaries, as well as keeping focus on optimizing the details of current experiences.  

In this role you will play a pivotal part in shaping the next generation of ESPN’s digital products and will shape how sports fans worldwide follow live games, consume stats and scores and engage with sports.  

This role requires deep levels of sports passion, knowledge and sports betting experience within a technology-first environment.  

What You Will Do 

• Lead product design for the ESPN Design team, supervising the work of at least 1-2 other designers  

• Partner with product and engineering to identify requirements, use cases, and user journeys  

• Illustrate and communicate complex design solutions across uses cases by creating process flows, wireframes, prototypes, and high fidelity mock-ups  

• Use data collected from research, user testing, and market analysis to create truly user-centered designs  

• Collaborate with a design manager, product manager, and cross-team peers throughout the product development life-cycle to iterate on and deliver a user experience that meets the highest quality bar  

• Act as a quality control on the team and make sure documentations are in top shape before delivering to engineers and QAs  

• Use a variety of metrics to analyze and continuously improve the user experience  

• Mentor and provide design directions for senior, mid-level designers and associate designers  

• Exercise ethical decision-making and do what’s best for our viewers  

• Be the voice in the room that always puts the user first  

Required Qualifications & Skills  

• MUST be a sports enthusiast  

• Minimum 7 years in Product Design at a technology company  

• Minimum 1 year(s) of experience leading other designers either as a project lead or people manager  

• Passion for evolving the design practice; it’s people, processes and tools  

• Consulting skills to help stakeholders & partners uncover project goals, constraints & dependencies; and then guide them to optimal solutions  

• Experience designing across multiple devices (iOS, Android, Web, Apple TV, Roku, Xbox, PlayStation, Fire TV etc.)  

• A strong portfolio demonstrating both personal and team-based work  

• A deep arsenal of design tools (Figma, Sketch, InVision, Framer, Mural, Keynote)  

• Proficiency in user-centered design thinking methodologies  

• Outstanding visual design aesthetics combined usable experiences that address problems  

• A strong drive in overcoming obstacles to make a product successful  

• An understanding of acquisition & conversion, data-informed design  

• Experience with experimentation design (A/B, MVT, Usability, etc.)  

• Be able to communicate directly with Product Managers, Stakeholders, and Developers to translate their visions and constraints, into beautiful, functional products that will delight our users  

• Excellent prioritization and documentation skills  

Preferred Qualifications  

• Experience and comfortability with Prototyping 

• Experience doing complex Vision-work, running Sprints, or Broadcasting 

• Proven experience in a senior design leadership role, influencing product strategy and driving organizational impact.  

Education  

• Bachelor's degree required, MBA or technical degree preferred