Senior Manager, Production - Playtest Operations

Job Description

As a Sr. Manager, Production on the Central Playtesting Operations team (CPO), you will oversee operational support, staff, facilities, & technology solutions for global games user research at Riot Games. You will be responsible for understanding both the near & long term playtesting & user research roadmaps, and consequent infrastructure needs, of user research, product management, & executive partners across the organization, and synthesizing those needs into vision, strategy, and priorities for the CPOI organization. You’ll determine what organizational, operational, business process, management, technological, facilities, etc. solutions are needed and drive solutions against those opportunities. You’ll navigate challenging strategic and management questions like “should we scale our hiring or automate our processes?”, “which user research technologies should we support in house vs. outsource?”, and “how do we balance meeting our partners’ needs today with investing in our ability to meet their needs tomorrow?”.

You’ll grow, lead, and manage a passionate team with a diversity of skill sets, overseeing their near-term and long-term priorities and ensuring efficient and effective delivery on those priorities & managing their individual careers. Your team will help all products get access to the lab facilities, research technologies, operations support, and, most importantly, the players they need to conduct the audience research that helps them meet their major goals and milestones. In collaboration with user researchers across the company, you and your team will be critical to our ability to conduct the research that helps us put player experience at the heart of everything we do.

Responsibilities:

• Define, direct, and oversee the evolution of the Central Playtesting Operations function; lead the team that executes, supports and operates game user research playtesting
• Manage, coach, and mentor individuals on the Central Playtesting Infrastructure team in a way that supports both their careers and the team’s performance
• Collaborate with customers, partners, and stakeholders, capturing requirements and opportunities and developing a deep understanding of needs and motivations
• Identify opportunities to optimize user research operations by improving communication, workflow, facilities, process, tools, documentation, etc. and drive the required changes
• Inform and build the team’s delivery roadmap, identifying critical path issues, removing roadblocks, and driving efficiency of execution
• Generate & clearly communicate plans, reports, updates, etc. that keep business partners and customers informed about status, progress, risks, and dependencies
• Oversee the various facilities, resources (e.g. playtester database), operational staff, infrastructure budget, and business processes serving user researchers across Riot
• Anticipate and meet the operational needs of a continually developing user research team working to be at the forefront of games user research
• Evaluate and select platforms, tools, partnerships, vendors, and solutions to meet our company and product needs

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years of relevant experience in operations, product management, production, etc.
• 2+ years experience managing people and leading teams
• Experience navigating complex and ambiguous problem spaces with competing sets of expectations and priorities and the ability to make strategic decisions and align partners across those priorities
• Experience improving team productivity and creating efficiencies through automation, tools development, and/or business process optimization
• Experience creating processes with other functions - i.e. finance, legal, procurement, security
• Effective communicator, with experience building strong customer relationships

Desired Qualifications:

• 2+ years of experience leading UX research operations, user researcher operations, or games user research operations teams preferred
• Experience managing and directing teams of growing scope as a general, operations, project, or product manager
• Experience developing and managing a budget
• Experience directing and guiding a team through a complete lifecycle of several launched organizational projects or initiatives
• Familiarity with the process of a user research study: problem identification, scoping, protocol design, recruiting, proctoring, data capture, analysis, etc.

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. We will be looking at your past studies, experience, and your personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about the experiences of players, this could be the role for you!

Our Perks:

Riot has a focus on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy, in addition to other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner and children, and a 401k with company match. Check out our benefits pages for more information.

Riot Games fosters a player and workplace experience that values teamwork embodied by the Summoner's Code and Community Code. Our culture embraces differences as a strength, and our values are the guiding principles for how we approach work. We are committed to putting diversity and inclusion (D&I) at the center of everything we do, and promoting a fair and collaborative culture where Rioters treat one another with dignity and respect. We encourage you to read more about our value of thriving together and our ongoing work to build the most inclusive company in Gaming. It’s our policy to provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and members of Riot Games, Inc. Riot Games makes reasonable accommodations for handicapped and disabled Rioters and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, handicap, veteran status, marital status, criminal history, or any other category protected by applicable federal and state law, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance relating to an applicant's criminal history.