Lead Producer, Production Technology | Irvine, CA

Team Name:

Battle.net & Online Products

Job Title:

Lead Producer, Production Technology | Irvine, CA

Requisition ID:

R024077

Job Description:

At Blizzard Entertainment, the Production Technology org encompasses multiple teams and technologies. This Lead Producer role will initially (but not exclusively) be focused on supporting two slices of the org:

Software Engineers (SWEs) building pieces of shared technology and Site Reliability Engineers (SREs). Our SREs use systems expertise combined with software engineering patterns to help define, create, and support the architecture, build systems, orchestration, and operations of services across the business. The role is composed of dedicated engineers that are focused on evangelizing reliability-as-a-feature through monitoring, service-level objectives, automation, everything-as-code, and testing.

Blizzard's games and platforms reach a global audience of passionate gamers. The scale is massive and the challenges are very real, but wise application of technology is the answer to keep it all running optimally with minimal guidance. Our Producers are at the heart of this work, working directly with the engineering teams from idea to launch to deliver the most epic (and reliable!) Experiences... ever.

This role is a hybrid work position, with some work on-site and some work-from-home. The potential home studio for this role is Irvine, CA.

What you bring to the table:

As a Lead Producer within the Production Technology org at Blizzard, you may find yourself….

• Apply your experience to coordinate and improve impact across multiple groups of SREs or SWEs while minimizing duplicated efforts.
• Managing the portfolio of work that iteratively improves services and infrastructure supporting
• Applying your expertise to guide the assembled team(s) in delivering effective solutions by assessing the difficulties faced by our organization and partner teams.
• Mentoring, developing, and inspiring, as well as learning from, the Producers that report to you
• Carving out a clear role and identity for our Producers, distinct from and supportive of our Technical Program Management (TPM) team
• Continuously partnering with Production Technology leadership, as well as the business as a whole, to make our team a top-tier destination for hard-working engineers in the industry.
• Using your strong oral and written communication skills to ensure all Blizzard product teams have a direct connection into Blizzard's centralized technology and platform departments
• Presenting novel ideas, solutions, and projects to both small and large audiences
• Enhancing business value and meeting team needs through a complete perspective when prioritizing efforts
• Building and actively maintaining positive, collaborative relationships across the company
• Championing automation to reduce toil and increase development velocity
• Identifying and eliminating risks and blockers. Communicating project status to interested parties.
• Creating urgency and momentum for projects that may not have a firm deadline.
  

Minimum Requirements

• Minimum 8 years of proven experience in a comparable role
• Experience working with engineers from multiple teams to create practical solutions
• Ability to independently assess system or team requirements and prioritize tasks accordingly
• Experience with defining the future of running services on platforms and games with Kubernetes
• Supporting massive global data platforms across multiple clouds
• Planning and coordinating service migrations from one cloud/data center to another
• Driving the planning and execution of stress tests to validate scale expectations vs reality
  

Key Attributes

• Love to solve novel and exciting problems
• Proactivity in automating or eliminating repetitive tasks
• Motivation to improve workflows and make everyone's job easier
• Commitment to continuous improvement and excellence
• Openness to experimenting with new technologies and tools
• Effective collaboration skills for solving problems and sharing knowledge
• High emotional intelligence and self-awareness in personal interactions
• Passion for supporting the success of peers
  

As a Producer, you will orchestrate projects and plan for the SREs in our department. SREs must become experts in the technologies used by their teams. Below is a list of technologies SREs may encounter:

• Service-Level Objectives (SLI, SLO, SLA, Error Budget, Burn Rate)
• Distributed Systems (architectures, micro-services, high-availability, elections)
• Configuration Management (Puppet, Hiera, Terraform, Terragrunt, Ansible)
• Container Computing (Docker, Kubernetes, Service Mesh)
• Cloud Services and Architecture (AWS, GCP, OpenStack)
• Distributed Message Bus (RabbitMQ, Kafka)
• Proxies and Load Balancing (Nginx, HAProxy, Envoy)
• Monitoring (Prometheus, Kibana, Grafana, Elasticsearch, Datadog)
• Logging (Splunk, SysLog, ELK Stack, Linux Journal, grep)
• Source Control (GitHub Enterprise, Perforce)
• CI/CD (Jenkins, Argo, Spinnaker)
• Linux (bash, debugging, tuning)
• Networking (triaging, packet loss, routing)
• Programming (Python, Go, C#, C++, Shell, PowerShell)
  

Your Platform

Best known for iconic video game universes including Warcraft®, Overwatch®, Diablo®, and StarCraft®, Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. (www.blizzard.com), a division of Activision Blizzard, which was acquired by Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), is a premier developer and publisher of entertainment experiences. Blizzard Entertainment has created some of the industry’s most critically acclaimed and genre-defining games over the last 30 years, with a track record that includes multiple Game of the Year awards. Blizzard Entertainment engages tens of millions of players around the world with titles available on PC via Battle.net®, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and Android.

Our World

Activision Blizzard, Inc., is one of the world's largest and most successful interactive entertainment companies and is at the intersection of media, technology and entertainment. We are home to some of the most beloved entertainment franchises including Call of Duty®, World of Warcraft®, Overwatch®, Diablo®, Candy Crush™ and Bubble Witch™. Our combined entertainment network delights hundreds of millions of monthly active users in 196 countries, making us the largest gaming network on the planet!

Our ability to build immersive and innovative worlds is only enhanced by diverse teams working in an inclusive environment. We aspire to have a culture where everyone can thrive in order to connect and engage the world through epic entertainment. We provide a suite of benefits that promote physical, emotional and financial well-being for ‘Every World’ - we’ve got our employees covered!

The videogame industry and therefore our business is fast-paced and will continue to evolve. As such, the duties and responsibilities of this role may be changed as directed by the Company at any time to promote and support our business and relationships with industry partners.

We love hearing from anyone who is enthusiastic about changing the games industry. Not sure you meet all qualifications? Let us decide! Research shows that women and members of other under-represented groups tend to not apply to jobs when they think they may not meet every qualification, when, in fact, they often do! We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment and strongly encourage you to apply.

We are committed to working with and providing reasonable assistance to individuals with physical and mental disabilities. If you are a disabled individual requiring an accommodation to apply for an open position, please email your request to accommodationrequests@activisionblizzard.com. General employment questions cannot be accepted or processed here. Thank you for your interest.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status, among other characteristics.

Rewards

We provide a suite of benefits that promote physical, emotional and financial well-being for ‘Every World’ - we’ve got our employees covered! Subject to eligibility requirements, the Company offers comprehensive benefits including:

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance;
• 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching;
• Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave;
• Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others;
• If the Company requires that you move geographic locations for the job, then you may also be eligible for relocation assistance.

Eligibility to participate in these benefits may vary for part time and temporary full-time employees and interns with the Company. You can learn more by visiting https://www.benefitsforeveryworld.com/ .

In the U.S., the standard base pay range for this role is $97,200.00 - $179,900.00 Annual. These values reflect the expected base pay range of new hires across all U.S. locations. Ultimately, your specific range and offer will be based on several factors, including relevant experience, performance, and work location. Your Talent Professional can share this role’s range details for your local geography during the hiring process. In addition to a competitive base pay, employees in this role may be eligible for incentive compensation. Incentive compensation is not guaranteed. While we strive to provide competitive offers to successful candidates, new hire compensation is negotiable.