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Program Manager, CGD

EA was founded 30 years ago by individuals with a deep passion for making games. Many things have changed over the years as the gaming industry—and the company—has expanded immensely, but we are still driven by the same passion for developing, publishing, and distributing the world’s best games. Our history has been one of great success, and our future looks even brighter. Gaming has come a long way from Pac-Man & Space Invaders to modern EA Favorites like Battlefield, Mass Effect, Real Racing, Plants vs. Zombies, FIFA, Madden, Need for Speed and the world’s most successful game franchise, The Sims. Fueled by our talented staff at locations across the Globe we are united in our passion to continue shaping the future of interactive entertainment. Together we can make a difference.

Position Overview

The Competitive Gaming Division (CGD) Program Manager will work closely with the CGD team and cross-functional business partners: development teams, marketing teams and central tech teams to ensure the successful execution of CGD’s major competitive gaming events and initiatives. This person will be responsible for proactively driving and planning end-to-end readiness for CGD major events and major projects. In addition, this person will be responsible for helping to evolve the CGD readiness operating model and other CGD engagement models.

This person will work closely with the CGD Commissioner and cross-functional partners to ensure a comprehensive event plan is created, actively managed, and updated to meet the event KPIs defined by CGD leadership.

As a member of the CGD Operations team, this person will identify and help drive cross-organization initiatives against our top CGD priorities, including analysis, recommendations and best practices relating to our planning process as well as operational performance improvement.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead: The coordination and planning for all “readiness” activities in the scope of the event program team for EA Major events specifically planning through final readiness to ensure a high quality execution.
• Drive cross-functional efforts: Lead efforts to drive cross-functional planning and prep activities across the event program team including the creation of detailed work plans and identification of dependencies working with both internal and external groups.
• Report Status / Risk Mitigation Plan: Drive regular status update meetings to assess progress and identify risks. Work with cross functional partners to proactively mitigate risks. As appropriate escalate risks to senior management. Consistently look for opportunities to improve how we work.
• Ensure activities are completed within compliance to EA business processes: work with the program team to ensure appropriate legal and finance processes are adhered to in the delivery of events.
• Lead the ongoing evolution of processes and tools within scope / consistently look for opportunities to improve how we work: Assess current processes and tools and proactively identify efficiency opportunities.
• Lead initiatives in support of CGD including large-scale projects
• Drive retrospectives – gather feedback from the program team after event execution and curate learnings to improve the execution of future events.
• Create impactful presentations to be shared with senior leadership as appropriate.
• Ability to effectively lead a cross-functional team; ability to influence and drive team to a common goal.

Required Work Experience and Skills:

• Education: Bachelor’s degree with a focus on business or management. 4-6 years working on large-scale projects and working with cross functional teams across various locations
• Years of experience: 5-7+ years at mid level management with:
• 3-5+ years of experience in the Gaming industry
• Competitive gaming experience a plus but not required
• 5+ years of experience in Online/Operations environments
• Excellent communication and project management skills (e.g. managing to timelines & budgets, setting expectations, sharing knowledge, etc.).
• Presentation Skills: Experience in presenting large volume of complex data in a streamlined, summarized way (e.g. writing and presenting status decks to varying levels of leadership)
• MBA a plus

Desired Profile

• Leader: Lead by example ensuring that opportunities to mentor others and direct the team towards mutual goals drive all work
• Solutions Provider: Able to identify and/or create solutions even when none seem immediately present
• Relationship Expert: Thrives in building, maintaining, and encouraging successful relationships between content and solution providers
• Escalation Expert: Able to foresee potential risks and identify a plan that prevents the risk from occurring or minimizes the impact. In addition, knows when to call in Management for reinforcements
• Creative: recognizes powerful ideas/features/trends in gaming & online world
• Self-Starter: Independent and motivated. Can act upon opportunities and issues accordingly
• Proven Leader: Comfortable communicating with a broad range of customer positions, from executive producer to software engineer. Able to work with various levels of the organization to bring solutions and understanding.
• Flexible and agile: Able to multi-task, adapt quickly and be effective in new situations
• Gaming Experience: Up-to-date knowledge of and some experience with gaming across multiple platforms

It’s not easy building the world’s best digital playground. It’s hair-standing-on-end exhilarating. It’s down-in-the-trenches challenging. It’s stroke-of-brilliance-at-midnight creative. It’s you—taking risks, challenging yourself, pursuing ideas, changing the way millions of people do something they love: play. In an industry that’s changing every day, EA is positioned for growth thanks to smart business plans, strategic acquisitions, and most importantly, our creative people around the world who gather each day to unite the world through play.