Production

ZeniMax Online Studios is seeking an experienced Producer/Project Manager to join our studio for the development of our next AAA game.  This is an opportunity to join an experienced group of developers and help develop a new IP.

The ideal candidate will be proficient in scheduling/planning, analyzing team metrics, and establishing a development environment designed to help the team achieve success.

Responsibilities:

• Help organize, manage, and maintain the project schedule and road-map
• Work to achieve improved predictability across multiple, feature-based teams using agile development methodologies
• Track and analyze team metrics to help make informed decisions on project scope and priorities
• Help create, manage, and maintain clearly-defined development processes and work-flows
• Assist in validating team staffing and organization
• Proactively identify project risks, issues, and triggers; establish actionable mitigation and contingency plans as needed
• Work with the team to define, schedule, and achieve project deliverables and goals
• Help shape development practices and processes to improve overall team efficacy
• Regularly communicate with key stakeholders to provide actionable status updates
• Share your knowledge and experience effectively to help the team achieve success

Requirements:

• Proficient with Jira and Confluence
• Minimum 3 – 5 years of experience working on AAA console/PC games as a Producer, Scrum Master, or Project Manager
• Have worked with, or led a team through, at least one full console/PC product cycle
• Able to create, manage, maintain, and analyze team reports using Excel, Jira, Visio, Confluence, and other standard development tools
• Proficient in Agile Development methodologies including Scrum, Kanban, and Lean Product Management
• Experience managing a team or sub-teams, including: establishing project plans, budgets, determining dependencies, assigning work, and helping the team achieve success
• Goal focused and results driven
• Comfortable raising concerns and issues
• Able to learn quickly and apply new concepts, principles, and processes
• Maintain a solution-oriented approach to development
• Professional communication and interpersonal skills, including conflict resolution
• Capable of identifying and communicating project risks and issues.  Able to take an implement appropriate steps to resolve
• Independent team member who has the ability to take ownership and help move projects forward despite obstacles and issues

The Senior Mobile Product Manager will analyze data and work with development teams to create features and experiences that drive engagement and monetization. Successful candidates will have a passion for good gameplay paired with successful monetization strategies, the ability to parse and act on data, and a drive for simple, flexible, and scalable gaming systems. We are seeking a self-starting someone who relishes the challenge of finding innovative solutions to enhancing KPIs. This individual is player-focused; but also understands and can deliver on business goals, while maintaining the creative vision.

If you love being knee deep in data, working with talented cross-discipline teams, and delivering best-in-class experiences to players, this position may be right for you.

Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with design and management teams to define target KPI's for monetization, engagement, and retention mechanics
• Work with our BI team to analyze metrics, create reports which show the performing/underperforming aspects of the game economic model, why, and provide solutions to management to improve KPIs and overall LTV
• Drive new initiatives, events, and game features that monetize and re-engage players
• Contribute to the design of features and systems by providing guidance on their impact on player behavior and the economy
• Strong sensitivity to gameplay and social game design, understanding how to build needs and emotions in the context of a game
• Maintaining a deep knowledge of player behavior within the game across multiple player types, and implement selling strategies targeting each of the different tiers
• Identify, prioritize, and enact A/B tests, analyze the results, and make recommendations for features/prices before implementing game-wide
• Review reporting on in-game currency usage, earning and purchasing, and manage and balance currency types

Requirements:

• 3+ years as a monetization designer/product manager or similar role in the gaming industry of a live/F2P title
• Excellent knowledge of the monetization of free-to-play games, both past titles and emerging trends
• Must be an avid mobile game player
• Outstanding analytical and formal thinking, able to break problems down in their key variables and identify the relations between them.
• Can speak to the prioritization features by leveraging data
• Knowledge and understanding of game design fundamentals
• Strong understanding of the content creation pipelines for mobile titles
• Ability to work independently and as part of a deeply collaborative team
• Excellent organization skills, detail-oriented, and able to multi-task priorities under pressure
• Strong communication, writing, and interpersonal skills
• Ability to work in a fast-paced and confidential environment
• Passion for making great games
• Proficient with project and communication tools such as Jira, Hansoft, Office, etc…
• Proficient with industry standard reporting and game management tools such as Tableau and Delta DNA
• Bachelors in Math, Statistics, Game Design or related field a plus

As a Live Services Manager, you have in-depth experience launching and supporting online products with a focus on delivering high quality service to a large population. The Live Services Manager provides direction to the community, support and feature teams based on the production schedule. You will also work with business leadership to coordinate and deploy Marketing, PR, Legal and other departmental efforts tied to your product. Excellent candidates will be comfortable preparing and managing complicated maintenances and incidents, particularly emphasizing overall organizational success by reducing downtime while minimizing risk to the business.

Responsibilities

•   Prepare and manage maintenances for all game realms and associated services in the production environment
•   Assist in identification and resolution of production incidents, including player and stakeholder communication
•   Gain knowledge of the game and services tech stacks in order to assist in troubleshooting and triage of issues
•   Negotiate and coordinate resources for scheduled and emergent production activities
•   Manage handoffs between your team and teams that are up and downstream
•   Collect, distribute, and pursue completion of continuous improvement items
•   Prioritize open issues based on quantifiable business justification
•   Record and analyze downtime for maintenances and incidents

Requirements

•   1+ years working on a live service mobile product
•   2+ years in a position where you directly managed deployments of live services
•   2+ years in a position where your problem-solving skills contributed to the resolution of production incidents
•   Working knowledge of the following systems/technologies:
  • Linux (CentOS/RHEL/Debian/Ubuntu)
  • Monitoring and trending systems (Nagios, Cacti, Graphite, Grafana, etc.)
  • Cloud technologies (AWS)
  • Container orchestration and operations (Kubernetes, Dockers, kops)
  • Databases (MySQL, MariaDB)
  • Load balancers (F5, HAProxy)
  • Storage/SAN
•   Flexibility to work a variety of shifts, including really early morning hours
•   Prior experience in a 24/7 on call rotation supporting business critical applications or systems is preferable
•   Game industry experience is desirable, but not required

As a Senior Live Services Manager, you are expected to have in-depth experience launching and supporting online products with a focus on delivering high-quality service to a large population. The Senior Live Services Manager provides direction to the community, support and feature teams based on player activities and the organizational response. You will also work with business leadership to coordinate Marketing, PR, Legal and other departmental efforts tied to your product. Excellent candidates will be comfortable influencing and negotiating priorities with other teams’ leadership, particularly emphasizing overall organizational success as the most highly-desirable outcomes.

Responsibilities: 

• Aggregate details and provide summarized messaging that evokes behavior change
• Quantify any requests of other teams with the business value
• Stage data for the purposes of player messaging
• Sell the business on service outages for the purposes of an improved player experience
• Negotiate and coordinate resources for activities
• Manage handoffs between your team and teams that are up and downstream
• Prioritize open issue list based on quantifiable business justification
• Gather, interpret and manage large volumes of data from many sources
• Demonstrate either correlation or cause/effect between feature/service changes and customer behavior
• Lead teams through maintenance, product update, and outage efforts
• Coordinate large scale technical projects that require milestone delivery and coordination with many business disciplines
• Manage and grow external partner relationships
   

Requirements: 

• You are the type of person who is calm in the face of adversity. You are quick to analyze information and provide a direction or conclusion based on the information you have.  You have many war stories of how something went in an unexpected direction, and your teams’ success against the odds.​
• You are dedicated to the team delivering. You own whatever activity for which you volunteer.  As a result, you are very willing to stay late/come in early to ensure the success of the initiative. When facing a blocker, you came up with resourceful ways to attain your objectives.
• You are driven by the overall success and love of learning, not fear of failure. You build on previous failures to have positive outcomes in the future.
  3-5 years in a position where you demonstrated your contribution to high-quality live service
• 5+ years in a position where you demonstrated your ability to prioritize organizational wins over individual or team wins
• 5+ years in a position where you demonstrated ownership of individual and team success and/or failure
• 5+ years in a position where your problem-solving skills contributed to organizational success
• 5+ years in a leadership role
• Amazing teamwork
• Excellent communication skills

Desired Skills: 

• Passion for live services
• Process design
• Strong negotiation skills
• Game Industry Experience is highly desirable, but not required
• Exemplary organizational skills
• Ability to drive change
• Strong leadership