Job Description:

You will be working as an Associate Director, Data Science in the New Initiatives Area in Candy Crush Saga; the pulsing heart of innovation at King.

New Initiatives is a multidisciplinary organization of gaming professionals (e.g. designers, developers, UX researchers, data scientists, artists, producers, business managers, etc) who work together to push the boundaries of innovation for Candy and King.

As part of our team, you will study user behaviour, strategic initiatives, product feature experimentation, and more, bringing data and insights into every decision we make. We strive to be the most evidence- based team at King.

Your role within our Kingdom

You will lead experimentation and analytics for the team, bringing data and insights into key strategic and product decisions we make. As a data science Associate Director, you will work together with a cross- functional team to identify key product levers for user growth (acquisition, reactivation, and engagement) and systematically test, optimize, and establish value for each. You’ll help us to further understand, model, predict, segment and retain our players and be part of a community of 100+ data science & analytics experts. This is a highly impactful role where you and the rest of the team will be able to create unique experiences for the millions of players of Candy Crush Saga.

Specifically, you’ll:

Help build and lead a great data science team, supporting the growth and development of other Data Scientists & evolving the methodologies and tools available to King.
Support the definition of the insights strategy through foundational analysis and experimentation initiatives to test hypotheses, and develop a deeper understanding of our players.
Translate complex business needs to technical requirements and AB- test designs, and work with development teams to ensure correct implementation, taking care to correctly track the right information to allow easy, precise analysis of the impact.
Identify the appropriate insights methods (experimentation, causal inference, regression methods, ML, etc.), execute on the chosen method to create impactful insights that support all the phases of the product development cycle (from exploration/ideation to shipping/tweaking).
Work together with user research partners to combine qualitative and quantitative insights into more powerful and compelling stories; understanding the “why” and the “what” of players’ behaviour.
Work closely with other Data Scientists across the business to leverage insights from one game across multiple games
Carefully check, debug, and problem solve issues to ensure you deliver accurate and clear analysis, reports and tools, even when confronted by subtle data complications

Skills to create thrills

Our ideal candidate will have solid experience leading experimentation- driven development of a commercial product. There is plenty of scope at King for you to learn from your colleagues in the areas where you have less experience, and to share your own skills where you are stronger.

Specific factors that are helpful to excel in this role include:

Product Knowledge: The ability to understand the problems and opportunities surrounding our games, and then defining the right data, analysis or interpretation to lead to the right recommendations and decisions.
Player- centric: The curiosity and eagerness to understand our players even more deeply by applying different mixed methods.
Management: The ability to manage, coach and support the growth of 3 Data Scientists.
Stakeholder Management: The ability to recognise dependencies, build relationships and influence others.
Collaboration: The ability to be part of a cross- functional team working closely with less savvy data people to ensure that decisions are evidence- based.
Communication: Designing good ways of communicating, visualising or reporting your results/analysis so they are clear and unambiguous
SQL: The ability to write complex SQL queries to analyse our databases with 300+ million players and work with relational database systems.
Analytical coding: Using tools such as R, Python or Excel for analytical purposes.
Stats: Understanding the basics of appropriate statistical or machine learning techniques.
Leadership: The ability to mentor, guide and inspire your colleagues and drive best practices across the company

Other experience that might be helpful, but is not required, includes:

Work in the games industry or similarly customer- facing digital businesses
Familiarity with massive data sets and tools to deal with them (BigQuery/AWS/Hadoop etc)
Experience in behavioural psychology/economics and experimental design
Experience in predictive analytics, segmentation, and related areas
Software engineering skills in Java and other languages (beyond R and Python which we use most frequently)
Skills with standard reporting tools such as Looker/QlikView/Tableau/etc.

We’re knights of creativity!

We believe that great gaming experiences happen when they are developed by working in small, autonomous creative teams that control the whole process – from idea to amazing game. Our close connection with the player community gets us instant feedback and enables us to deliver truly magical moments. We value your free time and your need to refuel, relax and find inspiration – by playing games with your colleagues, being at home with your family or going to the gym or out for a run. That's how we stay creative. That’s why we call ourselves developers of magic and knights of creativity!

Want to join our Kingdom?

If you are interested, please apply! Applications must be in English.

The brilliant experience we give our players comes from the diversity and experience of our people. A great saga needs all sorts of heroes. That’s why we hire all sorts of talent.

About King

King is the game developer behind the world- famous Candy Crush franchise, as well as mobile game hits including Farm Heroes, Bubble Witch and Pet Rescue. Candy Crush is the top- grossing franchise in US app stores, a position it has held for the last two years, and King’s games are being played by 255 million monthly active users as of Q2 2021. King, which is part of the Activision Blizzard group since its acquisition in 2016, employs nearly 2,000 people in game studios in Stockholm, Malmö, London, Barcelona and Berlin, and offices in San Francisco, New York, and Malta.

A Great Saga Needs All Sorts of Heroes

Making games is fun. Especially when you do it with people who share the same idea of what makes a good workplace great. We design games for everyone, no matter where they are or who they are, and we employ all sorts of people from all kinds of backgrounds to bring them to life. Truth is, we simply cannot expect diversity in our players and originality in our games without first nurturing it in our people. A great saga needs all sorts of heroes.

Making the World Playful

Making the World Playful is what inspires us to create new experiences and raise the bar. It’s what makes King a place where we can all dream bigger, continue to add innovation to our games, broadening the portfolio and exploring new territories in mid- core and casual. We take the art and science of gaming to the next level through our curiosity for the unexplored, passion for games, respect for each other and love for our players – and we’re not afraid to have fun along the way. In fact, together with our parent company Activision Blizzard and experts around the world, we believe having fun is good for you. There has never been a better time to join us. We're dreaming bigger and see a world of possibilities ahead. If you share our passion, our values, and our hunger to shape the future, join us in Making the World Playful!

Applications needs to be in English.