Manager, Production - Playtest Operations

The Strategic Advisory Department helps empower Rioters' decision-making to be more data-informed. We're an interdisciplinary group of scientists, consultants, and strategists from all sorts of backgrounds who join together to represent and advocate for gamers around the world. We believe that illuminating the globally diverse experiences, behaviors, and needs of gamers is critical to Riot living up to our player-focused mission. We're a group united by our love of games, science, and helping others succeed. Do you embody player empathy and care deeply about the experiences of your audience (our players)? If so, this could be the role for you.

As a Manager, Production on the Playtest Operations team, you will oversee infrastructure development (facilities, participant databases, etc.) and operational support for games user research labs at Riot Games in Los Angeles. You will be responsible for working with researchers and department leadership to understand both near and long term user research needs and designing and implementing the consequent infrastructure to meet those needs. You will grow, lead, and manage a team of playtest operations staff, overseeing their near-term and long-term priorities, ensuring efficient and effective delivery on those priorities, and 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 and helps us put player experience at the heart of everything we do.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the team that executes, supports and operates game user research playtesting functions for our Los Angeles labs
• Manage, coach, and mentor individuals on the Los Angeles Playtest Operations 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 direct the team’s daily activities, identifying critical path issues, removing roadblocks, and driving efficiency of execution
• Generate and clearly communicate plans, reports, updates, etc. that keep business partners and customers informed about status, progress, risks, and dependencies
• 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 recommend platforms, tools, partnerships, vendors, and solutions to meet our company and product needs
• Work with playtest operations staff to support the execution of individual playtests - recruitment, lab configuration, moderation, hosting, and troubleshooting as necessary
• Ensure lab participants have a positive, safe, and smooth experience

Required Qualifications:

• 3+ years experience managing and directing teams of growing scope as a general, operations, project, or product manager
• 2+ years of experience leading UX research operations, user researcher operations, or games user research operations teams preferred
• 2+ years people management experience; recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, mentoring, and evaluating employees
• Experience directing and guiding a team through a complete lifecycle of several launched organizational projects or initiatives
• Experience improving team productivity and creating efficiencies through automation, tools development, or business process optimization
• Experience creating processes with other business groups - i.e. finance, legal, procurement, security
• Familiarity with the process of a user research study: problem identification, scoping, protocol design, recruiting, proctoring, data capture, analysis, etc.

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience developing and managing a budget
• Effective communicator, with experience building strong customer relationships
• Experience navigating highly complex and ambiguous problem spaces with competing sets of expectations and priorities

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.

(Los Angeles only) Base salary range between $151,000 USD - $211,000 USD + incentive compensation + equity + 401K with company match + medical, dental, vision, and life insurance + short and long-term disability + open PTO.                                            

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.