Head of Operations

WE ARE GAME MAKERS

What We Need

The Director of Studio Operations is a member of the studio administration team and responsible for the overall operational management of the studio. With your project management leadership, you will build alignment and optimize processes globally across all cross-functional development disciplines and studio leadership and provide a real-time product roadmap for internal and external stakeholders. You will optimize end-to-end production by managing bottlenecks, escalating challenges and identifying opportunities for improvement and optimization. This role will own relationships with both 2K/T2 QA, legal, customer service, finance, and operations and outside licensors and vendors. 

How You'll Lead

• Team and Culture Architect: You don’t just manage tasks; you build a high-performance team and a high-functioning environment. You foster a culture of healthy accountability in which developers are supported in order to unlock their best work.
• Expert Collaborator: You are the connective tissue between the studio and our 2K/T2 partners in QA, legal, finance, and shared services. You navigate corporate requirements and technical hurdles with a focus on solutions, ensuring operational constraints never get in the way of development velocity.
• Long Term Vision: You’re looking down the road. You provide a real-time product roadmap and data-driven recommendations that set the studio up and development pipelines for sustainable, future success.

What You’ll Do

• Create the Bar: Lead the construction and evolution of our Studio Operations team. You’ll push the boundaries of how we scale internally and externally, ensuring our operational efficiency is a standout, defining feature of the studio.
  Shape the Studio Experience: Oversee the studio’s physical and digital interactive core. From long-range planning calendars to the lifecycle management of hardware and software, you ensure the environment is organized and efficient so developers can operate at peak efficiency.

• Build External Development Pipelines: Build and lead best in class External Development, Co-Development and Outsourcing processes and pipelines in close collaboration with the development team and our 2K partners. Manage communications and relationships with 2K and T2 on an ongoing basis.

• Master the Financials: Collaborate with the Studio Head on the annual studio budgeting process and P&L responsibility. You’ll set budget policies and partner with finance to ensure we are delivering high-quality games in a fiscally responsible way.

• Build and Listen to the Data: Develop and work closely with your KPIs and reporting structures to understand where our development pipelines are and aren't working. Then work between your team and the development team to address those friction points.  

• Refine the Pipelines: Don't just use existing processes—improve them. You’ll partner with leadership across the team where required to help sharpen our development methods so that the development team can spend more time designing and building, and less time doing mundane work or fighting with tools and pipelines.

• Keep Things on Track: Partner with production and studio leadership to make sure we’re hitting our milestones in a sane and sensible way. You believe that great work happens when the organization is healthy, balanced, and organized.

• Guide the Developer Experience: Direct the studio’s employee experience strategy by managing the Employee Experience Coordinator and fostering an environment that balances developer velocity with an inclusive, high-performance culture.

• Partner of Studio Head: Work very closely with the Studio Head and an extension of him across the aforementioned and any additional areas of responsibility, and create useful reporting to leverage to ensure we are always evolving and a studio and providing our developers with the best possible situation to build the best game for our players

What Will Make You A Great Fit

• A Tested Leader: You’ve spent 10+ years in the games industry and have a track record of high-quality leadership. You’ve built and led operational teams through the complexities of product roadmaps and live-service management.
• Master of the Craft: While your primary remit is to lead your team and be part of the studio leadership team, you have expert chops in project management and business strategy. You are a pro with the software and tools (like Excel) but are just as comfortable managing external development and complex deal sheets.
• Operational Expert: You deeply understand the psychology of collaboration and what makes a studio tick. You know when to provide structure and, more importantly, when to get out of the developers' way.
• Collaborative Spirit: You’re a pro at the pitch. You can explain a complex philosophy or idea to a non-expert in a way that gets them aligned and ready to build with you, and work together to get the job done.

The pay range for this position in California at the start of employment is expected to be between $176,600 and $261,380 per Year. However, base pay offered is based on market location, and may vary further depending on individualized factors for job candidates, such as job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and other objective business considerations. Subject to those same considerations, the total compensation package for employees in regular roles may also include other elements, including a bonus and/or equity awards, in addition to a full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, provided that temporary or intern roles will not be eligible for many of these payments or benefits. Details of participation in compensation and benefit plans (if applicable) will be provided if an employee receives an offer of employment. If hired, employee will be in an ~at-will position~ and the company reserves the right to modify base salary (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation or benefit program) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.

31st Union prides itself on the diversity of its team members, partners, and communities.  For this reason, we remain committed to providing equal employment opportunity in all aspects of the employment relationship, from recruitment and hiring through compensation, benefits, discipline and termination.  This means that employment at 31st Union depends on your substantive ability, objective qualifications and work ethic – not on your age, race (including traits historically associated with race, including, but not limited to, hair texture and protective hairstyles), height, weight, religion, creed, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, sexual orientation, gender (including gender identity and expression), alienage or citizenship status, transgender, military or veteran status, physical or mental disability (actual or perceived), medical condition, AIDS/HIV, denial of family and medical care leave, genetic information, predisposition or carrier status, pregnancy status, childbirth, breastfeeding (or related medical conditions), marital status or registered domestic partner status, political activity or affiliation, status as a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking, arrest record, or taking or requesting statutorily protected leaves, or any other classification protected by federal, state, or local laws.

As an equal opportunity employer, we are also committed to ensuring that qualified individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation(s) to participate in the job application and/or interview process, to perform their essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment.  Please contact us if you need to request a reasonable accommodation.

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