Director, Applied AI Acceleration (SWE)

Job ID 10148438 Location Seattle, Washington, United States Business The Walt Disney Company (Corporate) Date posted Apr. 22, 2026

Apply Now

Job Summary:

Role Overview

The Walt Disney Company is building a new Applied AI team within Enterprise Technology to accelerate AI adoption across the enterprise. This team will operate as a high-impact engagement practice—embedding directly with business teams to diagnose operational challenges, identify high-value AI opportunities, and deliver production-grade solutions that create measurable business outcomes.

The Director, Applied AI will build this team from the ground up and lead it as both strategic architect and hands-on technical leader. You will set the vision, design the engagement model, recruit and develop world-class talent, and personally drive early engagements that establish the team’s reputation for excellence. This is a rare opportunity to create something new at the intersection of AI innovation and one of the world’s most complex and iconic businesses.

What You’ll Do

Build and Scale the Team

Recruit, hire, and develop a team of ~20 applied AI practitioners across the U.S. and India, blending software engineers, AI/ML specialists, and product-minded technologists.
Establish a team culture rooted in craft, velocity, and user empathy—where every member brings a product mindset to technical challenges.
Coach and mentor team members at all levels; create clear growth paths that retain top talent in a competitive market.
Foster a learning organization through internal hackathons, knowledge sharing, and continuous upskilling on emerging AI capabilities.

Design the Engagement Model

Architect the team’s strategic engagement framework—a structured, repeatable methodology for how Applied AI partners with business teams across TWDC.
Lead discovery-first engagements: embed with business stakeholders to deeply understand their workflows, pain points, and operational context before proposing solutions.
Apply industry best practices from applied AI disciplines (lean/kaizen process analysis, design thinking, rapid prototyping) to frame engagements that move from discovery to deployed solution in weeks, not months.
Establish a tiered engagement model: rapid wins (days to weeks), focused sprints (4–8 weeks), and strategic partnerships (quarter-long transformations) to match effort to opportunity size.

Deliver Applied AI Solutions

Lead from the front: personally engage in early projects to set the bar for quality, speed, and stakeholder experience.
Build AI agents, automation workflows, and intelligent tools that solve real problems—from autonomous procurement negotiation to knowledge worker acceleration.
Bring a “start with the papercuts” philosophy: identify low-hanging fruit that demonstrates AI efficacy quickly, building trust and momentum while the team develops capability for larger transformations.
Ensure solutions are production-grade, maintainable, and designed for the humans who will use them—not just technically impressive.

Drive Strategy and Executive Alignment

Set strategic vision and technical direction for how Applied AI creates value across TWDC’s diverse business portfolio.
Build and maintain superb relationships across business units, translating non-technical pain points into compelling AI roadmaps.
Communicate with executive presence: present to senior leadership with clarity, credibility, and a bias toward outcomes over technology.
Develop a portfolio view of AI opportunities across the enterprise; prioritize ruthlessly based on business impact, feasibility, and strategic alignment.

Who You Are

You are a builder. You’ve created teams from scratch and know the difference between hiring a roster and building a culture. You are equally comfortable whiteboarding system architecture, coaching a junior engineer through a hard problem, and presenting a quarterly roadmap to a C-suite audience. You’ve shipped products, not just prototypes—and you know how to navigate the stakeholder complexity of a global enterprise to get things across the finish line.

Specifically, you bring:

Deep applied AI expertise: hands-on experience with LLMs, AI agents, workflow automation, and modern AI development tooling (Cursor, Claude, Copilot, etc.). You don’t just manage AI teams—you understand the work and can open a laptop and build alongside your team.
A product mindset: you instinctively start with user needs, not technical capabilities. You’ve shipped AI-powered products to real users and understand the full lifecycle from concept through launch.
Process intuition: you can walk into a complex business operation, see where it breaks down, and map the path from manual process to intelligent automation. You think in systems, not features.
Exceptional communication and relationship skills: you build trust quickly, translate fluently between technical and business language, and navigate complex stakeholder environments—legal, procurement, security, executive leadership—with empathy and precision.
Leadership at scale: experience building and managing distributed teams (including offshore), with a coaching-first philosophy that develops people into leaders. You’ve hired well, and the people you’ve developed have gone on to do great things.
Enterprise fluency: you understand how large organizations actually work—the governance, the vendor dynamics, the cross-functional alignment required to ship at scale. Deep familiarity with TWDC’s business units, organizational dynamics, and strategic priorities is strongly preferred.
Bias toward action: you’d rather ship an 80% solution today and iterate than spend three months on a perfect plan. You bring energy, not process theater.

Qualifications

Required 15+ years in software engineering, AI/ML, product development, or applied technology roles, with progressive leadership experience.
Demonstrated experience delivering AI/ML-powered products or solutions in enterprise production environments.
Strong technical foundation across the AI stack: can evaluate architecture decisions, assess model fitness, guide build-vs-buy trade-offs, and contribute to technical direction.
Track record of delivering outsized results—building high-performing teams that ship fast and punch above their weight.
Experience navigating complex enterprise stakeholder environments—legal, procurement, security, and executive leadership—to drive initiatives from concept to completion.
Experience designing engagement or delivery frameworks for internal consulting, center of excellence, or professional services models.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field.

Preferred

Advanced degree (M.S. or Ph.D.) in Data Science, Machine Learning, AI, or a related quantitative discipline.
Experience with AI agent frameworks, autonomous workflow design, and modern rapid-development methodologies.
Track record of AI patent activity or applied research that has translated into shipped products.
Background in management consulting, internal consulting, or AI Center of Excellence models.
Familiarity with enterprise platforms (Coupa, ServiceNow, Workday, SAP) and their AI integration opportunities.
Experience leading AI vendor evaluation, negotiation, and enterprise-scale platform rollouts.
Existing relationships across TWDC business units and technology leadership.

The hiring range for this position in Seattle, WA is $239,700 to $321,400 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.

Apply Now

About The Walt Disney Company (Corporate):

At Disney Corporate you can see how the businesses behind the Company’s powerful brands come together to create the most innovative, far-reaching and admired entertainment company in the world. As a member of a corporate team, you’ll work with world-class leaders driving the strategies that keep The Walt Disney Company at the leading edge of entertainment. See and be seen by other innovative thinkers as you enable the greatest storytellers in the world to create memories for millions of families around the globe.

About The Walt Disney Company:

The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise that includes three core business segments: Disney Entertainment, ESPN, and Disney Experiences. From humble beginnings as a cartoon studio in the 1920s to its preeminent name in the entertainment industry today, Disney proudly continues its legacy of creating world-class stories and experiences for every member of the family. Disney’s stories, characters and experiences reach consumers and guests from every corner of the globe. With operations in more than 40 countries, our employees and cast members work together to create entertainment experiences that are both universally and locally cherished.

This position is with Disney Worldwide Services, Inc., which is part of a business we call The Walt Disney Company (Corporate).

Disney Worldwide Services, Inc. is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, military or veteran status, medical condition, genetic information or disability, or any other basis prohibited by federal, state or local law. Disney champions a business environment where ideas and decisions from all people help us grow, innovate, create the best stories and be relevant in a constantly evolving world.

DISABILITY ACCOMMODATION FOR EMPLOYMENT APPLICATIONS

The Walt Disney Company and its Affiliated Companies are Equal Employment Opportunity employers and welcome all job seekers including individuals with disabilities and veterans with disabilities. If you have a disability and believe you need a reasonable accommodation in order to search for a job opening or apply for a position, visit the Disney candidate disability accommodations FAQs. We will only respond to those requests that are related to the accessibility of the online application system due to a disability.

Having technical issues? View the FAQs for help.

Hiring Process

Where Does Your Story Begin?

Explore Disney Careers and the Life at Disney blog to learn about all the amazing opportunities waiting to be discovered at The Walt Disney Company.
Be Part of the Story

There are many different brands and businesses to explore. Once you've found the opportunity that is right for you, take the next step by completing your application.
The Next Chapter

Once you've applied, you will receive an email allowing you to access your candidate dashboard. Create your login and make sure to check your dashboard often to see your application progress.

Explore this Location Seattle, WA

With a thriving food-and-drink scene, eclectic neighborhoods and a stunning coastal setting, Seattle is a dynamic urban enclave nestled in the Pacific Northwest. The city is bounded by Lake Washington in the east and Puget Sound to the west, an ideal location for water recreation and sight-seeing cruises.