Disney's New APM Program: What the Job Postings Reveal for 2027

Disney's APM program in one minute

Disney's APM program is barely a year old. Disney first posted it in December 2025, for a class starting July 2026, and seven weeks later posted a job for someone to "design, develop, and implement a new Associate Product Management Program."

The September 2026 posting, for the class starting summer 2027, is only the second, and it is still open. It pays $97,500 to $130,700 in Los Angeles, runs two years with one team switch, and puts you fully on-site in Glendale or New York. At least 522 people applied through Simplify alone in its first three weeks.

Question	Answer, from Disney's posting
What is it?	A two-year "career accelerator" for new grads, with the title Product Manager I (APM)
When does it start?	Summer 2027, as a cohort
How many rotations?	One team switch, at the 12-month mark
Where?	Greater Los Angeles (Glendale) or New York, both fully on-site
What does it pay?	$97,500 to $130,700 a year in Los Angeles, plus a possible bonus or long-term incentive units
What degree?	Bachelor's or master's in computer science, engineering, or a related technical field
When does it close?	No deadline posted. Open since September 15, 2026, and still open on October 5

You can read the full text on Disney's careers site or see Disney's posting on APMList next to the other live APM new grad roles, which refresh hourly.

How Disney built this program in under a year

Most APM programs have years of alumni and interview write-ups behind them. Disney's has three job postings, and read in order they show how the program came together.

Date posted	Posting	What it said
Dec 5, 2025	Product Manager I (APM), the first APM post	Class starts July 2026 in Glendale, $97,500 to $130,700. Our tracking stopped seeing it on Dec 19
Jan 22, 2026	APM Program Lead, a "12 month project hire"	Hire someone to "design, develop, and implement a new Associate Product Management Program"
Sep 15, 2026	Associate Product Manager Program	Class starts summer 2027 in Glendale or New York, same pay. Still open on Oct 5

So Disney started recruiting its first class and the person who would build the program around it about seven weeks apart. The program lead's duties read like a blueprint for what you would walk into. The lead was to:

• design the rotational structure, including how long rotations last and which teams they cover
• build onboarding, a training curriculum, mentorship models, and evaluation processes
• "partner with Talent Acquisition to design recruitment strategies targeting early career talent"
• work with "external learning vendors" to deliver the training
• set KPIs and gather feedback from participants to refine the design

The two class postings are word for word the same on pay, length, rotation, and duties. The posting moved almost three months earlier, from early December to mid-September. Disney also added New York as a second location, and this year's posting has stayed up three weeks and counting, while last year's lasted about two.

Key takeaway: if the July 2026 class started on schedule, you would be joining the program's second class. That is early enough to have a say in how it runs, and early enough that nobody has finished it yet.

Where you would work, and what "Product Manager I" means

The program sits in Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology, the group that builds the apps and platforms behind Disney's media brands. The posting names Disney+, Hulu, ESPN, ABC, ABC News, Nat Geo, Marvel, and Star Wars.

Its metadata files the job under "PM - ESPN Product." That tells you which group owns the headcount. It does not tell you which team you will join.

Your title is Product Manager I, with APM in parentheses, so on paper you are a product manager from day one. You write requirements and user stories, help set OKRs and roadmaps, research competitors, analyze usage data, and support launches.

Take the location seriously. Both Glendale and New York (Disney's Hudson Square office) are labeled "Fully On-Site."

Disney decides your city and team at the offer, and the posting asks candidates to be "open and receptive" to every listed location. Apply only if you would take either one.

That is more office time than any other program in this guide asks for. Robinhood's new grad APM role in New York expects you in at least three days a week. Roblox's APM is in the office Tuesday through Thursday, and Visa's program is hybrid.

What it pays next to other APM programs

Disney posted one range, for Los Angeles: $97,500 to $130,700 a year, with "a bonus and/or long-term incentive units" possible on top. It did not post a New York figure.

The table compares it with the other new grad APM postings our tracking captured this fall, using the base pay each company listed in its own posting.

Program	Location	Posted base pay	Office policy
Disney APM Program	Los Angeles (New York not posted)	$97,500 to $130,700	Fully on-site
Visa APM	Austin / Bay Area	$104,000 / $116,480	Hybrid
Robinhood APM, New Grad	New York	$130,000	3+ days a week
Salesforce APM	SF and NYC areas ($132,000 to $146,000 elsewhere)	$159,000	Flexible
Roblox APM	San Mateo	$143,000	Tuesday to Thursday

Disney's range starts lower than every other program here, and its top lands near Robinhood's flat $130,000. Disney says the actual offer depends on location, skills, and experience, so don't count on the top of the range. Our APM salary guide covers how base, bonus, and equity add up.

Who is applying: 522 people in three weeks through Simplify alone

As of October 5, 2026, at least 522 people have applied to Disney's program through Simplify. Of those, 122 applied in the first 24 hours and 339 in the first week. These counts only include people who applied through Simplify, so the true totals are higher.

Last year's posting was up for only about two weeks in December, so it is not a fair benchmark. The closest one is the other APM programs that opened this fall, counted the same way over each one's first seven days.

Program	Opened	Applied through Simplify, first 7 days
Robinhood APM, New Grad	Sep 14, 2026	907
Roblox APM	Sep 3, 2026	342
Disney APM Program	Sep 15, 2026	339
Visa APM (2 locations)	Sep 17, 2026	144

A program with no alumni and no public interview reports drew about as many applicants in its first week as Roblox's APM role, which has years of postings behind it. So Disney has no trouble attracting applicants. Applicant counts are not acceptance odds, though, and Disney has not said how many APMs it will hire.

Their Simplify profiles show who is applying:

• 58% study computer science, engineering, or data science, 16% study business or economics, and most of the rest list "Other" as their major.
• 42% are class of 2027, 33% are class of 2026, and 9% are class of 2025.
• 24% said they need visa sponsorship.

Three of those numbers are worth acting on.

If you are a business or economics major

About one applicant in six is in your shoes. The posting asks for "Computer Science/Engineering or related technical field," but it also accepts experience "through coursework, projects, or internships in product management or related technical domains." So put your technical work in the top half of page one, whether that is a SQL analysis, a project you shipped, or a data class.

Our PM resume keywords guide covers what recruiters search for, and Simplify's Resume Builder checks your resume against Disney's posting before you send it.

If you graduated in 2026

A third of applicants are class of 2026, and recent grads are eligible: the posting asks for an "upcoming or recent graduate." If you finished school this year and are still looking, this program is open to you. If you graduate in 2028 or later, as about 6% of applicants do, it is not, because the class starts full time in summer 2027.

If you need visa sponsorship

About a quarter of applicants said they need sponsorship, and the posting does not say whether Disney sponsors for this program. Ask your recruiter on the first call, before you spend weeks on interviews.

What joining a young program means

The costs are real. Nobody has finished the program yet, so nobody can tell you where Disney's APMs end up after two years, and we could not find a single public write-up of its interviews.

Disney will also keep changing the program as it learns. It hired the program lead to "gather feedback" and "refine program design," and your class is part of who they will gather it from.

The upside is attention. An early class in a new program tends to get more of leadership's time than the tenth class does, because its results decide whether the program keeps going. You also get a hand in shaping how it works.

Ask your recruiter these before you accept an offer:

1. Can I talk to someone from the July 2026 class?
2. How do team matching and the 12-month rotation work, and do I get a say?
3. How big is my class, and how is it split between Los Angeles and New York?
4. What happens at month 24? Is there a defined role after the program?
5. Does Disney sponsor visas for this program, now or after it ends?
6. Who runs the program day to day? Disney hired its program lead as a 12-month project hire, so it is fair to ask what happens after that.

Disney's program is one of many, so plan the rest of your fall around when every APM program opens, and follow the others on Simplify's Associate Product Manager list.

Disney's other APM job, in Orlando

Disney Experiences, the parks and resorts side of the company, also hires Associate Product Managers onto its digital teams in Florida. Our tracking captured six of these postings on five dates since September 2025.

Posted	Location	Posted pay
Sep 20, 2025	Orlando, FL	not captured
Mar 3, 2026	Celebration, FL	not captured
Apr 3, 2026	Orlando, FL	not captured
Apr 29, 2026 (two postings)	Orlando, FL	$92,900 to $124,500
Sep 22, 2026	Orlando, FL	$92,900 to $124,500

The most recent one, for the Walt Disney World Festivals & Events team, asked for "0+ years of relevant experience" and a "Bachelor's degree in a comparable field of study, or equivalent work experience." No technical degree required. It was listed as primarily on-site, with occasional days from home.

This is not a program. It is one job on one team, without the cohort or the rotation. But if your degree does not fit the program's technical requirement, this is the Disney APM job that does not rule you out.

Two cautions.

Disney titled the September posting "Associate Product Manager (Project Hire)" and does not define the phrase publicly. The one place we found it explained is the program lead posting, which described "a 12 month project hire." So ask whether the Orlando role is fixed term before you treat it as permanent.

And these postings go fast. Our tracking stopped seeing each one within about a week. If you don't know anyone at Disney, Simplify's Disney page shows ways to get referred.

When Disney posts product internships

If you graduate in 2028, the program is a year away for you. The internship is the door that is open now, or about to be.

Last cycle, Disney posted nine product management internships on a single day, October 30, 2025, all at $42 an hour.

Eight were titled "Product Management Intern," across Seattle, New York, Santa Monica, Glendale, and San Francisco. The ninth was an ESPN Product Management Intern role in New York and Bristol, Connecticut. Our tracking stopped seeing all nine between November 4 and November 6, so the whole wave was gone in about a week.

Posted	Role	Location	Pay
Oct 30, 2025	Product Management Intern (9 postings, incl. ESPN)	Seattle, NYC, LA area, SF, Bristol CT	$42/hr
Dec 10, 2025	Product Manager Intern	Glendale, CA	$42/hr
Feb 18, 2026	Product Manager Intern (2 postings)	Orlando, FL	$42/hr
Mar 19, 2026	Product Manager Intern (2 postings)	Seattle, Orlando	$42/hr
Apr 14, 2026	ABC News Product Management and Engineering Intern (2 postings)	New York	$22.50/hr

The later postings came down within six to ten days. Disney also posted a product management internship in Orlando on October 7, 2024, so October has brought Disney PM internships two years running.

That is still only two cycles, so the timing may not repeat. But if Disney follows last year's pattern, its summer 2027 product internships will post in the next few weeks and close within about a week. Check the APM internships list, which refreshes hourly, and save anything you find to Simplify's free Job Tracker so every posting and application sits in one place.

How to prepare for interviews nobody has written up

We could not find a public account of Disney's APM interviews from last cycle's applicants. Be skeptical of anyone who claims to know the exact rounds.

What you can do is prepare for the job the posting describes. It names the skills plainly: data analysis on usage and user behavior, product requirements and user stories, OKRs and roadmaps, and competitor research. Expect the interviews to test those.

Practice on prompts drawn from the kinds of products this group builds:

1. How would you reduce churn between seasons on a sports streaming product?
2. A streaming app wants more viewers to finish the first episode of a new series. What do you measure, and what do you ship first?
3. Write a one-page requirements doc for a feature that lets a family share one account without wrecking each other's recommendations.
4. Pick a competitor of one Disney streaming product and write a one-page competitor analysis.

Answer each one out loud, with numbers. The posting lists "basic data analysis to inform product decisions (e.g., usage metrics, user behavior)" as a core duty, so put a metric in every answer. For the rounds most APM programs run, see our APM interview process guide.

Questions people ask about Disney's APM program

Is Disney's APM program remote?

No. Both locations, Glendale and New York, are listed as fully on-site.

Do I need a computer science degree?

The posting asks for a bachelor's or master's in computer science, engineering, or a related technical field. About one in six applicants through Simplify study business or economics anyway, but without that degree you need technical work on your resume to make the case.

Does Disney sponsor visas for the APM program?

The posting does not say. About 24% of the people who applied through Simplify said they need sponsorship, so ask your recruiter early.

How many rotations are there?

One. You switch teams at the 12-month mark of the two-year program.

When does the application close?

Disney has not posted a deadline. Last cycle's posting came down after about two weeks. This one was still open on October 5, 2026, three weeks after it went up, so do not wait for a deadline.

Can I apply if I already graduated?

Yes, if you graduated recently. The posting asks for an "upcoming or recent graduate."

Do this next: apply to Disney's APM program on Simplify while it is open. Disney's application runs through Workday, which means a long multi-step form, and Simplify Copilot fills most of it in for you. Then pick your next applications from the live APM new grad roles list.