Manager, Development Live Ops

CREATIVITY IS OUR SUPERPOWER. It’s our heritage and it’s also our future. Because we don’t just make toys. We create innovative products and experiences that inspire fans, entertain audiences and develop children through play. Mattel is at its best when every member of our team feels respected, included, and heard—when everyone can show up as themselves and do their best work every day. We value and share an infinite range of ideas and voices that evolve and broaden our perspectives with a reach that extends into all our brands, partners, and suppliers.

The Team:

Mattel is a leading global toy and family entertainment company and owner of one of the most iconic brand portfolios in the world. We engage consumers and fans through our franchise brands, including Barbie®, Hot Wheels®, Fisher-Price®, American Girl®, Thomas & Friends™, UNO®, Masters of the Universe®, Matchbox®, Monster High®, MEGA® and Polly Pocket®.  Our offerings include toys, content, consumer products, digital gaming, and live experiences. Since 1945, Mattel has been a trusted partner, empowering generations to explore the wonder of childhood and reach their full potential.

We are looking for talented individuals to join our games publishing business, where you can help develop innovative and engaging digital experiences that resonate with our beloved brands. If you’re passionate about gaming and eager to be part of a dynamic team at the forefront of family entertainment, this could be the opportunity for you!

The Opportunity: 

The Live Games Infrastructure Manager will play a critical role in supporting the live operations for our gaming business.  The position supports the vision and scaling of our technology infrastructure to support the deployment and rapid growth of Mattel’s gaming player base.  Work directly with game studios in collaboration with internal technology teams to ensure successful planning, deployment and execution of infrastructure to support live games operations.  From concept inception through live deployment, you will provide timely critical expertise, guidance and hands-on execution and support to ensure the right infrastructure and services are in place to operate and grow live gaming services globally.  Works closely with technology and liveops leadership in the Mattel games publishing team.

The ideal candidate is passionate about live games operations, with a solid track record of work with software development and infrastructure teams to design and deploy large-scale systems in a live consumer environment.

What Your Impact Will Be: 

• Oversee the games live infrastructure domain, developing robust strategy and planning to support the product release cycle and operations and growth of Mattel’s live published games.
• Support Mattel games publishing business - Advise and guide the games publishing team in the architecture, development and deployment of mission-critical liveops infrastructure; successfully bringing together game studio expertise, third-party partnerships and internal Mattel capabilities.  Collaborate with Mattel’s privacy and compliance teams to ensure our experiences are safe, secure, and compliant.
• Support games development studios - Be an enabling force to support game development studios with insightful architectural guidance and direct integration support of both third-party solutions and Mattel infrastructure. Collaborate internally with Mattel technology teams to leverage internal capabilities and expertise.
• Interface with third-party technology service providers to uphold development and live operational issues, navigating roadblocks and deploying & testing solutions.
• Own KPIs around operational performance and cost effectiveness.  Provide accurate and timely reporting forecasts & analysis.  Ensure all components are robust and scalable to support market projections, and beyond.  Develop QA & test capabilities, enabling development teams to effectively debug and validate stability, scalability and security.
• Continuous improvement - Innovate how we think about our infrastructure and services, closely following industry advancements that enhance player experience, development efficiency and operational performance.

What We’re Looking For: 

• BA/BS degree Engineering/Networking discipline preferred or equivalent work experience in SRE / SRO roles.
• 8+ years of experience in the games industry, supporting successfully published games in the trenches with games liveops teams, enterprise IT, and game development teams.
• Experience in system design, product release cycle and games ops at a global scale.
• Experience resolving infrastructure challenges, understanding the complexities of how to build and deploy robust live services that are scalable and secure.
• Analytical thinking with a solution-oriented mindset, brings industry best practices and disciplined approach to resolving mission-critical problems.
• Prior working knowledge and expertise of industry-leading cloud computing in a games services context – including tools and services such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft PlayFab, Google Cloud Platform, Firebase, Ansible, Jenkins, Terraform, Heroku, Kubernetes, CDNs, and game server fleet management.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with SRE / DevOps tools such as Prometheus, Grafana; Incident Management Tools such as Opsgenie; Configuration Management Tools such as Ansible, Chef; CI/CD Tools; Containerization and Orchestration such as Docker and Kubernetes; and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform and Cloudformation.
• Experience with managed cloud data platforms such as BigQuery.
• Prior participation in penetration testing exercises, and remediation responses.

The annual base salary range for this position is between $112,000.00 and $170,000.00.
**This range is indicative of projected hiring range, however annual base salary will be determined based on a candidate’s work location, skills and experience.

Don’t meet every single requirement? At Mattel we are dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.

How We Work:

We are a purpose driven company aiming to empower generations to explore the wonder of childhood and reach their full potential. We live up to our purpose employing the following behaviors:

• We collaborate: Being a part of Mattel means being part of one team with shared values and common goals. Every person counts and working closely together always brings better results. Partnership is our process and our collective capabilities is our superpower.
• We innovate: At Mattel we always aim to find new and better ways to create innovative products and experiences. No matter where you work in the organization, you can always make a difference and have real impact. We welcome new ideas and value new initiatives that challenge conventional thinking.
• We execute: We are a performance-driven company. We strive for excellence and are focused on pursuing best-in-class outcomes. We believe in accountability and ownership and know that our people are at their best when they are empowered to create and deliver results.

Our Approach to Flexible Work:

We embrace a flexible work model designed to empower a culture of growth, optimism, and wellbeing, where every employee can reach their full potential. Combining purposeful in-person collaboration with flexibility, our focus is to optimize performance and drive connection for moments that matter.

Who We Are:

Mattel is a leading global toy and family entertainment company and owner of one of the most iconic brand portfolios in the world. We engage consumers and fans through our franchise brands, including Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price, American Girl, Thomas & Friends, UNO, Masters of the Universe, Matchbox, Monster High, MEGA and Polly Pocket, as well as other popular properties that we own or license in partnership with global entertainment companies. Our offerings include toys, content, consumer products, digital and live experiences. Our products are sold in more than 195 countries in collaboration with the world’s leading retail and ecommerce companies.

Mattel is recognized as a Great Place to Work™ and as one of Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators in 2022.

Visit us at https://jobs.mattel.com/ and www.instagram.com/MattelCareers.

Mattel is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer where we want you to bring your authentic self to work every day. We welcome all job seekers including minorities, females, veterans, military spouses, individuals with disabilities, and those of all sexual orientations and gender identities.

Pursuant to the Los Angeles Fair Chance Ordinance and the California Fair Chance Act, qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment.

Videos to watch:
The Culture at Mattel
Mattel Investor Highlights