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Senior Technical Project Manager, Planning

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Job Description:

The Battle.net & Online Products (B&OP) organization is home to 300+ superpowered engineers, product managers, and designers focused on the technology that powers Blizzard Entertainment’s games. Whether you’re playing one of our titles, chatting with friends, or just shopping online, B&OP ensures that our players are immersed in engaging, exciting, and secure experiences. B&OP is responsible for several platform products that are shared among all of Blizzard’s games.

We are looking for a passionate and skilled Senior Project Manager to join the Planning & Strategy team within B&OP.

As a Senior Project Manager, Planning, you will be responsible for the successful intake, delivery, and support of first- and second-party integrations, serve as the main contact team for Product teams regarding project prioritization and status, establish and build strong relationships between partner teams, drive key central initiatives from initiation to launch across B&OP and dependent teams, and act as a champion for continuous improvement while working to enhance the efficiency, predictability, and visibility of our projects.

The ideal candidate will have experience managing multiple product development teams through all aspects of the product lifecycle including planning, implementation, testing, release, and operations. By blending your project management experience with superior collaboration and alignment skills, you will

empower a department of hundreds of world class Engineers, Product Managers, and Designers to create epic entertainment experiences.

You will interact with technical leaders and varied levels of staff within B&OP and on game teams from across the Activision Blizzard organization, including World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Hearthstone, and Call of Duty. Our ideal candidate is a seasoned technical partner with prior experience with large scale complex online services, a passion for building great experience, and the ability to create successful partnerships across organizations.

This role will focus on the implementation of services that scale with our game portfolio and increased player engagement. Specific experience with data migration to cloud services, significant work in coordinating engineering teams that are building for high growth curves and leadership within environments that have experienced the challenges of high-capacity load and concurrency are highly desired.

Covid-19 Hiring Update: We’ve transitioned to a work-from-home model and we’re continuing to interview and hire during this time. This role is expected to begin as a remote position. We understand each person’s circumstances may be unique and will work with you to explore possible interim options.

Responsibilities:

• Create Connections: Develops and maintains strong relationships (providing indirect leadership) with the technical contacts by serving as the principal day-to-day point of contact for all things related to the successful technical implementation. Liaises with Business Operations Management on Game Product Teams to facilitate communication and understand Business Priorities for the product. Facilitates between Game Product Team and B&OP to determine high level requirements for projects and report back on status
• Manage Complexity: Provides regular communication (cross- and intradepartmental, internal/external, and cross-hierarchy) to ensure transparency and progress of projects. Cuts through the ambiguity to identify the core issues (both procedurally and technically)
• Accelerate the Process: Communicates dates, capacity, metrics/results, and prioritization to make sure we are completing high profile deliverables. Negotiate agreements that meet critical development and launch deadlines while maintaining positive relationships. Focuses on delivery while keeping a vision to create a repeatable process
• Design & Measure Success: Ensures that software is being developed at high quality. Establishes roll out of new products and features to enhance the platform’s potential. Balance the need to maintain platform and customer experience while ensuring initiative timelines are met. Formulate initiative critical metrics, acceptance criteria with product managers to drive a culture of data-informed decision making
• Drive Large Cross-Department Programs: Partner with colleagues on cross-discipline teams to bring together a unified deliverable. Develops and controls deadlines, budgets, and activities associated with the program. Applies change, risk and resource management. Assesses program performance and aims to improve return on investment. Resolves projects’ higher scope issues. Keeps leadership and collaborators appraised of the initiative status
• Shape Product Strategy: Champion a vision for the product and possess the tenacity to make that vision become reality. Understand and facilitate the use of financial metrics, return on investment, revenue potential and opportunities across the B&OP products and services to determine priorities and impact. Determine product success metrics. Use industry expertise to generate ideas for new products or services. Remain up-to-date on research, market environment, industry trends, and technologies relating to the product. Look for ways to increase the profitability of efficiency of existing products. Review and use metrics reporting for fact-based decision making
• Ambassador for the platform: Develops and maintains a strong understanding of Battle.net features, capabilities, current integration difficulties, andstandard methodologiess in order to provide strong proactive guidance to technical personnel responsible for integration. This person is going to need to be able to empathize with teams implementing our tech across the entire gaming hardware landscape (PC, Mac, Playstation, Xbox, Switch, iOS, Android space)
• Develop Work Systems & Lead Change: Works with an approach of continuous improvement that uses data and retrospectives to guide our future processes. Identifies gaps, inconsistencies and inefficiencies in our existing processes and tooling. Leverages creativity and problem solving to define new processes and tools that address found opportunities. Builds consensus and drives consistent adoption of new processes and tooling across the organization. Roots out problems and risks, raises concerns, challenges convention, and inspires people to move in new directions
• Nurture a Healthy Development Environment: Uses work systems that support effective, balanced, sustainable work while improving project predictability, individual and team agency, and product innovation. Champions efforts, activities and projects that build trust and collaboration within the organization. In partnership with leadership and HR, continually reassess the team’s maturity and health

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience managing end-to-end releases of a well-known software product
• Demonstrated success with defining Enterprise-level products
• Technical integration experience with strong indirect leadership skills
• Detailed knowledge of software lifecycle; software development best practices; project management methodologies and release management methodologies
• Be dedicated, and show ability to deliver on ambiguous projects with incomplete data
• Strong interpersonal skills and a love for collaboration
• Strong understanding of the requirements gathering process
• Experience in working within global teams and cross-functional teams
• Ability to work independently and under pressure
• Ability to provide structure in a dynamic environment
• Highly motivated and with a positive attitude
• Seeks out opportunities for improvement on a continuous basis
• High attention to detail with an emphasis towards measurement

Pluses

• Prior engineering experience, including Computer Science undergraduate and/or graduate degree
• Knowledge of large-scale, complex online services that are global and undergone significant growth trajectories
• PMP Certification; Agile coaching and training expertise; Agile Certifications (CSM, CSPO, CSP, PMI-ACP, etc.)
• Experience with Atlassian products; Jira and Confluence
• Love of Games
• Geeks out over being a conduit

Blizzard Entertainment is a global company committed to growing our employees. We offer generous benefits and perks with an eye on providing true work / life balance. We’ve worked hard to champion an intensely collaborative and creative environment, a diverse and inclusive employee culture, and training and opportunity for professional growth. Our people are everything. Our core values are real, and our mission has never changed.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status. We are dedicated to creating the most epic entertainment experiences…ever. Join us!