Research Operation Coordinator - Global Research Operations Team (Contract)

As a Research Operation Coordinator (Contract) at Riot, you’ll facilitate passionate, cross-functional teams in creating unique content and incredible experiences for our players around the world. You will encourage teams to communicate, guide development, remove roadblocks, and ultimately help drive our products into players’ hands, while making sure that our teams and workflows are healthy and sustainable at every stage of production.

On the Global Research Operations Team, you will work across our portfolio of live and new products, supporting both US-based and China-based researchers by driving coordination and facilitation of playtesting labs and research studies in Shanghai (and sometimes elsewhere in the Southeast Asia region), and ensuring that players have a voice in our products. This role would be an excellent fit for someone interested in deepening their understanding of user research and research operations, while actively engaging in meaningful and practical contributions. You will interact directly with players by recruiting, screening, scheduling, and paying honorariums. In the playtest lab, you will help by checking players in, setting up, configuring playtest devices, and operating the recording equipment. You will also work with user researchers by helping to moderate focus groups, assembling notes and summaries of key findings, translating, and contributing to reports. Additionally, you’ll proactively identify and pursue new opportunities that increase the efficiency and effectiveness of user research operations in Shanghai. Through direct collaboration with playtesters and researchers, you will contribute significantly to enhancing Riot’s ability to listen to and serve players around the world.

You will be based onsite within the Shanghai office and international travel will be required, as we support global playtesting & research operations events around the world. Please note expected travel is required at a minimum of 5% per year.

Responsibilities:

• Represent Global Research Operations in the Shanghai office, establish processes & procedures for labs, and conduct successful playtests for live and new products while working closely with US-based researchers
• Recruit, screen, and engage players via email, phone, or vendor relationships for a variety of local (Shanghai) and international (mainly Southeast Asia) research studies and playtests
• Facilitate playtest labs effectively, operating and troubleshooting playtest lab equipment (PCs, mobile devices, recording equipment, networking, streaming) to ensure data is collected efficiently and effectively
• Manage deployment of shared team resources across multiple research and playtest studies and improvement initiatives within the Global Research Operations team, while prioritizing lab schedules to maximize Shanghai lab utilization across product and game teams
• Identify and resolve potential issues or obstacles, and advocate for continuous process improvement of various inter-team and cross-functional workflows
• Support the team by facilitating and participating in decision-making, removing roadblocks, managing distractions, and maintaining documentation for scope and processes
• Drive forward progress on research, playtest, and project sprint commitments via work and capacity planning, estimations, velocity tracking, and proactive backlog refinement
• Organize and run productive meetings; facilitate quality note-taking and ensure action items are driven to resolution
• Work alongside researchers to ensure best practices are protected and integrated continuously into research, playtests, and improvement projects
• Keep stakeholders consulted and informed on progress and bought into discussions as needed to ensure research and playtest success
• Encourage collaboration between the team, researchers, developers, and other internal stakeholders and partners
• Provide important research and playtest feedback and insight to the team, leadership, stakeholders, and partners
• Champion best practices around sustainable research and playtest operations practices to cultivate and nurture team health
• Translate all lab materials (pre-lab communications, in-lab instructions, post-lab results) and act as an interpreter during lab to accommodate researcher interaction with participants
• Moderate labs, guiding participants through a set of tasks and prompting them for authentic, actionable feedback
• Effectively share and discuss your results with researchers
• Manage inventory, maintenance, setup, upgrades to lab spaces, and troubleshooting for all IT hosts and devices in the playtesting fleet, up to and including: PCs, laptops, mobile devices, consoles, peripherals, etc.
• You will minimize pain across all IT workflows; Process development, Automation, and Documentation will be your mantra as you try to make everything simpler and more efficient.
• Ensure compliance based on all IT Group standards and security policies
• Identify gaps in infrastructure and accomplish projects to improve the quality of service

Required Qualifications: 

• 2+ years of professional experience in a research operations or project management role
• 1+ years of experience with computer lab or complex audio/video setups
• Working knowledge of computer lab or complex audio/video setups
• Excellent written and verbal communication skill for technical and non-technical audiences

• Ability to juggle multiple information streams in a fast-paced environment and communicate effectively across all mediums
• Experience building roadmaps and schedules to track progress and delivery
• Experience with various project management frameworks like Scrum and Agile
• Experience with project management and productivity tools like Jira, Miro, and Notion
• Comfortable leading user discussions or moderating focus groups
• Fluent in English and Mandarin with a strong ability to translate/interpret
• Valid passport & ability to travel internationally
• Experience and openness to working international events

Desired Qualifications: 

• Experience in research operations
• Experience with survey sampling and other quantitative market research or social science techniques
• Experience with the Salesforce CRM platform and working with HTML email templates
• Experience with IT support or help desk troubleshooting
• Experience with audio and video editing
• Experience with scripting languages such as Python and PowerShell to help automate administrative tasks
• Experience developing Azure AD, O365, and hybrid windows environments
• Experience managing Windows 10, Server 2008, and Server 2012+ services, including hands on experience with system installation and configuration, file system concepts, resource monitoring, user administration, package management, and process control
• Experience servicing a broad spectrum of development collaboration tools, including GitHub, JIRA, Confluence, and Google Apps
• Experience building windows image creation, deployment, and endpoint management at medium to large-scale (MDT, WDS, SCCM, FOG, or similar technologies)
• Experience with MDM solutions and managing mobile device users in a restricted environment
• Bachelor’s degree in a related field

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise and a collaborative spirit that prioritizes the delight of players. We will look at your past studies and experience, but for this role, we also look for dedicated people with a personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about players' experiences, this is the role for you!