Location:  

Bellevue, WA, US, 98004

Date:  May 8, 2021

Req ID:  3029

Description: 

Discovery hires the very best and brightest talent who are enthusiastic and passionate to fulfill the company’s mission of empowering people to explore their world and satisfy their curiosity.

In exchange for their talent and drive, employees are provided with an engaging, diverse workplace and the resources they need to learn, thrive and grow in their careers.

Job Summary

Discovery is looking for a Program Manager to join our Direct To Consumer (DTC) Technology Team. We are looking for that rare candidate preferably with a technical background, exemplary written and verbal communication skills, strong organizational skills, and the ability to thrive with little process, direction, or oversight. This is a role inside a fast-paced start-up environment where we are also building process and structure befitting a major corporate entity. This position will appeal to a person who is excited by ambiguity and new product development while yearning to help shape project and portfolio management practices and contribute towards establishing the overall strategy of the DTC Technology space, to reduce this ambiguity over time.

As television and media habits change, our mission remains true to the principles that founded Discovery – every day we seek to ignite people’s curiosity to engage, entertain and enlighten the world around them through amazing viewing experiences.

The Direct To Consumer Group is a technology company within Discovery Inc. With Discovery, Food Network, Golf TV, MotorTrend, Eurosport, Discovery Play, and many more brands to support, we build user experiences ranging from classic lean-back viewing to interactive learning applications for smart TVs, web, mobile phones, tablets, and consoles.

To support these experiences, we are building a global streaming video platform and a suite of applications to support all our network’s brands globally. The services are modern container-based micro-services operated on AWS, covering everything from search, catalogue, video transcoding, personalization, to global subscriptions. The device platform spans consoles, smart TVs, web, mobile phones, and tablets. This is a growing, global engineering group crucial to Discovery’s future.

Responsibilities

We are looking for program manager to manage a technical portfolio within our DTC Technology PMO team. Specifically, the role will require to oversee all vendor engagements and partner with finance, procurement, and technology leaders to create a seamless engagement model, via the deployment of workflows and mature governance. This leader will institute a practice of evaluating vendor performance and will ensure quality of delivery. They will push for competitive rates, with adherence to all information security policies and ensure all processes are followed. The ideal candidate communicates clearly, organizes project timelines, secures commitments, manages risks, identifies the critical path, spots edge cases, reviews metrics & data, and monitors operations for the DTC Technology Portfolio. The ideal candidate can switch effortlessly between these modes adapting themselves to the needs of their work streams. They are a strong self-starter and therefore can drill into business data and research results to identify clear direction and focus for their tasks, projects, and programs. They continue to move forward in the face of ambiguity and imperfect knowledge. Their interest in computer science has not faded as they moved into a project management role and they are still comfortable with a technology setting and working closely with engineers on their projects. 

Competencies

• Proactive Problem-solving: First and foremost, you are a problem-solver. You work tirelessly to keep work streams on track, to unblock software development, and to ensure that the best possible outcome is achieved for the business. You are eager, confident, and able to use all the tools at your disposal to solve whatever problems crop up.
• Active Learning: You are here to learn and grow. Your industry knowledge will never be complete and you are hungry to learn more and to share what you have learned with your peers and the team(s) that you  influence.
• Computer Science Fundamentals: You understand a broad range of computer science concepts, and know how, when, and when not to use them. You can dive deep into a wide range of technical problems offering suggestions and feedback to your team. Your interest in computer science has not faded as you moved into a program management role and you are still comfortable with technical details.
• Efficient & Effective: You are here to solve business problems and help our customers, not to prepare reports or oversee meetings. You find the most effective way to use our precious internal resources to
achieve the best outcome. You find the most effective means to communicate clearly and concisely to all interested stakeholders. You are simplifier and a productivity multiplier for others around you.
• Exemplary Communication: Your written and verbal communication skills are top notch. You can distill key points out of complex technical descriptions to share with non-technical stakeholders, adapting your language and style of communication depending on the audience. You can clearly articulate decisions that have been made and supporting materials that back them. You are confident and capable of speaking to both the business operations or technical decisions. You communicate through data, dates, and facts using narrative and emotion judiciously.
• Adaptable: You communicate clearly, analyze technical designs, organize project timelines, secure commitments, manage risks, identify the critical path, spot edge cases, triage bugs, review metrics & data, and monitor launch operations. You switch effortlessly between these modes adapting yourself to the needs of your work streams.
• Self-starter: You are a strong self-starter and therefore can drill into business data and research results to identify clear direction and focus for your projects and programs. You continue to move forward in the face of ambiguity and imperfect knowledge. You do not suffer from “analysis paralysis.”
• Open & Decisive: You proactively share information to teach and inform your stakeholders. You are valued for the decisions that make in pursuit of your program. You are driven by your own impact, the positive
outcomes that you drive. You share freely all that you learn so that others around you can be more effective.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree with 10 years of experience in project/ portfolio management (or master’s with 8 years) in the technology realm.
• You have demonstrated the ability to manage a technology portfolio and have experience in portfolio related functions like vendor management, demand management (intake, prioritization, etc.), resource capacity management (headcount planning, work allocation, hiring, etc.), annual operating planning, road-mapping, risk management, and program/project management standards and templates.
• You have worked with technology suppliers and administered MSAs, SOWs and contracts.
• You have negotiated BOT (Build, Operate, Transfer) models with technology partners
• You can deploy new processes, engagement models and workflows with stakeholder ease in mind.
• You have demonstrated the ability to understand organizational and corporate goals and ensured that your projects delivered what was required to hit these goals.
• You can plan budgets, adjust forecasts as necessary and track financial performance of an organization.
• You have demonstrated your written and verbal communication skills can be applied to business and technical areas across all levels, from the engineering teams to senior level executives.
• You have knowledge surrounding the PPM (Project Portfolio Management) discipline and are familiar with standard PPM tools offered in the industry.
• You MUST have experience with JIRA, Confluence, Smartsheet & Microsoft Suite of products.
• You have contributed to creating processes and mechanisms, deploying tools, and building partnerships across a technology organization to deliver on ambiguous and challenging goals.
• Subject matter expertise in industry related processes and tools related to portfolio management
• Good understanding of software development methods like CI/CD, Agile Scrum, Waterfall, etc.
• You have experience with all phases of project delivery from concept to production, including defining features and deliverables, securing team commitments, establishing a project charter, handling all communication and reporting, overseeing development & deployment, and performing retrospective assessment using data and key performance indicators.
• You have demonstrated the ability to make decisions for more than one project or program area showing that your judgment is fungible, and you may be to handle more than one project simultaneously and successfully.
• This role will require working with stakeholders across the globe, which means a flexibility to be able to get on calls beyond conventional work hours
• Travel is required both domestic and international averaging about 20%
• Must have the legal right to work in the United States.

Preferred Skills (not required):
• Technical background in software engineering or related field, ideally with professional experience as a software engineer.
• Data literacy including one or more of: SQL, Tableau, Power BI. You are confident with data retrieval and its application to guiding project decision-making.

Discovery Communications, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. Discovery is committed to being an employer of choice, not just a good place to work, but a great and inclusive place to work. To that end, we strive to recruit and maintain a workforce that meaningfully represents the diverse and culturally rich communities that we serve. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to their race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, protected veteran status or disabled status or, genetic information.

We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of applicable state and local laws, including but not limited to all local Fair Chance Ordinances.

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