The Battle.net & Online Products (B&OP) organization is home to 300+ 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 team within B&OP.

As a Senior Project Manager 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 strategic initiatives from initiation to launch across B&OP and dependent teams; and act as a champion for continuous improvement while working to maximize 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 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.

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:

Nurture a Healthy Development Environment: Utilizes 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 re-asses the team’s maturity and health.
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, ROI, revenue potential and opportunities across the B&OP products and services to determine priorities and impact. Determine product success metrics. Utilize 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 utilize metrics reporting for fact-based decision making.
Ambassador for the platform: Develops and maintains a strong understanding of Battle.net features, capabilities, current integration pain points, and best practices 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).
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 executing on 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 maximize the platform’s potential. Balance the need to maintain platform and customer experience while ensuring initiative timelines are met. Formulate initiative KPIs, 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 maximize ROI. Resolves projects’ higher scope issues. Keeps leadership and stakeholders appraised of the initiative status.
Develop Work Systems & Drive Change: Works with a mindset 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 identified 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.

Requirements

Proven 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 self-driven, 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
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

Blizzard Entertainment is a global company committed to growing our employees along with the business. We offer generous benefits and perks with an eye on providing true work / life balance. We’ve worked hard to foster 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 dedicated to creating the most epic entertainment experiences…ever. Join us!