Advanced Program Manager (Unannounced Project)

We are ArenaNet, a studio making online worlds infused with innovation, hand-crafted excellence, and creative passion. Our passion is broadly shared; gamers made Guild Wars 2 the fastest selling MMO game in the West with more than 3 million copies sold in its first 9 months, and players and press have consistently called it one of the best MMOs of all time.

Our studio is built on foundations of excellence with a focus on community. We constantly innovate, unlocking the true potential of online role-playing with game-changing titles like Guild Wars 2 and beyond. The status quo isn't good enough for our dedicated worldwide community of players which is why we question the de facto industry conventions and demand more from ourselves as developers.

As an Advanced Program Manager, you will own and manage testing and strategic research efforts for in-development games. You'll have the opportunity to influence product development teams to prioritize efforts that improve system reliability, mature critical features, and ultimately delight our player base. You'll be instrumental in establishing, optimizing, and automating data collection and analysis mechanisms to provide meaningful insights into player behavior. By leveraging data trends and human insights, you'll be helping the studio to understand what our players think, feel, and do.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Develops and executes program management best practices to optimize game stability, iteration speed, core gameplay, and feature maturation.
• Develops new mechanisms to scale and optimize existing processes; nurtures relationships across teams to align senior stakeholders on joint goals.
• Plans, organizes, manages, and executes complex projects across the game development team.
• Composes project documents, including goals, risks, roadmaps, schedules, and performance metrics to drive action across both technical and creative teams.
• Partners with Game Developers; sets up and optimizes testing best practices that enable rapid build/test iteration cycles; integrates A/B testing and Design of Experiment with Agile software development.
• Collects and enhances test data reporting requirements, primarily from game design, engineering, and QA.
• Executes usability studies, playtests, interviews and user surveys on in-development products.
• Analyzes game systems and trends in player behaviors to drive game development practices that optimize game stability, core gameplay, and feature maturation.
• Develops, configures, and maintains automated tests; identify targets for expanding automation coverage.
• Communicates findings, actionable recommendations, and data limitations through written reports to Product Managers, Game Designers and UX Designers to facilitate data informed decisions.
• Contributes research findings and perspectives around all development cycles, from planning to post-release.
• Creates, documents, and communicates new/updated programs, policies, processes, and workflows.

WHAT YOU'LL NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL

• Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Engineering, Computer Science, or a related discipline.
• 8+ years of Program Management / Project Management experience required.
• 5+ years of experience leading cross-functional teams to deliver products and projects on tight deadlines.
• 3+ years of experience as a program manager in an agile development environment.
• Experience with Unix/Linux environments, distributed systems and/or developing large scale web applications.
• High attention to detail including proven ability to manage multiple, competing priorities simultaneously.
• Ability to think strategically and execute methodically.
• Demonstrated ability to lead teams and communicate with senior leadership.
• Experience establishing and managing business intelligence frameworks and mechanisms.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills combined with an ability to solve problems independently.
• Sound business judgment, proven ability to influence others, and strong analytical thinking skills.
• Strong quantitative and qualitative analytical skills.