About Skillz
Skillz is the leading mobile games platform connecting players in fair, fun, and meaningful competition.
The gaming industry is larger than movies, music, and books, with more than 2.7 billion gamers playing monthly and 10 million developers worldwide. Mobile is the fastest-growing segment of the gaming market, expected to increase from $68 billion in 2019 to $150 billion in 2025.
As the first publicly-traded mobile esports platform, Skillz has pioneered the future of the gaming industry. The Skillz platform helps developers build multi-million dollar franchises by enabling social competition in their games. Leveraging its patented technology, Skillz hosts billions of casual esports tournaments for millions of mobile players worldwide, and distributes millions in prizes each month.
Through its philanthropic initiatives, Skillz has harnessed the power of its platform to transform the way nonprofits engage with donors, enabling anyone with a mobile device to support causes such as the American Red Cross, Susan G. Komen, American Cancer Society, and NAACP by playing in Skillz tournaments.
Skillz has also earned recognition as one of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, a two-time winner of CNBC’s Disruptor 50, one of Forbes’ Next Billion-Dollar Startups, and the #1 fastest-growing company in America on the Inc. 5000.
Job Overview
Our mission wouldn’t be possible without the very thing making Skillz happen: its people. We hire the top 1% of all candidates; now, we need a People leader to define how we’ll build, develop and support our growing team as we enter an incredibly exciting new phase of growth. As a newly created Executive team position, the Chief People Officer will be responsible for defining and executing transformational, systematic talent strategy to match the growth of our rapidly scaling business.
Your team will empower Skillz to continue doubling in size every year: by hiring the Skillzians we need to scale, and by building and implementing the robust yet innovative solutions, processes, and development programs aligned with our business objectives. Relationship building is critical to your leadership style, and you thrive most when provided the leeway to build and execute a retention-focused talent strategy. You enjoy a mission-driven, fast-paced environment where the work you put in daily directly impacts organizational growth. You are an expert on the inner workings of a business and are proactive in driving the organization towards continuous improvement.
What You Will Do
- Lead and continue to build a strong team of Talent Acquisition and PeopleOps professionals
- Develop thoughtful organizational design and measurable recruitment processes to strategically staff all functional areas of the business - across all current and future Skillz locations - with top talent
- Build our culture by driving and managing business-critical People strategy for the Skillz of today and tomorrow
- Define and lead scalable, effective, and proactive People initiatives, including but not limited to: performance management; employee engagement and retention; leadership and people development; total rewards; diversity & inclusion; and culture, workplace and employee experience
- Collaborate closely with the Executives and Managers as a thought leader for recruiting philosophies, processes, tools and tactics aligned with the objectives of the business
- Enable healthy scaling, productivity and business expansion by defining and executing hiring and people strategy aligned with our business objectives and company values
Your Skillz
- 15+ years of experience building and leading high-performing People teams
- BS required, advanced degrees and/or relevant certifications a plus
- Proven track record of balanced experience and leadership success for each functional area of a People org, including Talent Acquisition and PeopleOps
- At least 5 years of experience managing Director+ functional leads
- Proven success scaling growing organizations from 100 - 1000+ including global expansion
- Demonstrated ability to build global People strategies with consideration for talent priorities 3-5 years ahead
- Analytical mindset; you seek to understand and solve a problem and instinctively ask for data
- Tremendous emotional intelligence and judgment, enabling your success as a trusted partner