Studio IT Manager

Join the award-winning team that created God of War

Santa Monica Studio is seeking a Studio IT Manager!

This role involves delivering innovative information technology services for both Santa Monica Studio and the PlayStation Studios Motion Capture Stage. Under the direction of the IT Director, the Studio IT Manager will lead a team consisting of skills ranging from support specialist through senior level Systems Administrators, providing all levels of support and engineering for both workstation and infrastructure.

You and your team will deliver tailored IT solutions that support the development of extraordinary award-winning titles that PlayStation Studios are known for. While your main focus is the delivery of studio specific technical solutions, you will work in collaboration with other supporting IT teams within SIE and Sony to coordinate the successful delivery of non-studio specific IT solutions meeting studio needs and expectations.

Studio IT prides itself in customer service and views building and maintaining support relationships with internal business teams, promoting trust, setting expectations, and achieving mastery in customer service as fundamental to its success.

Well-versed in a wide range of client technologies, you are responsible not only for the implementation, maintenance, and highest level of performance-tuning for client technology, but also for being a champion for strong working relationships directly with the people who apply that technology. You are also highly conscientious to meeting customer needs in a quick and agile manner while also ensuring that solutions provided are delivered as safely and securely as possible.

The Studio IT manager is responsible for the coordination and management of all IT functions on-site to include collaboration with other Studio IT teams and other supporting IT teams within SIE and Sony. The successful candidate will be responsible for developing yearly budget plans in coordination with the Director of IT and for handling spend towards budgetary expectations.

The ideal candidate must possess strong social skills, a good balance of technical and management experience including a complete understanding of computers and network operations in a creative/development environment.

Responsibilities

• Leading the Studio IT team in providing solutions and services in support of title development and delivery of title services.
• Identify staffing needs and hiring staff as appropriate
• Adapts to changes in the work environment; handles contending demands; changes approach or method to best fit the situation; able to deal with frequent change, delays, or unexpected events
• Gather and analyze metrics to benchmark workload, performance, and identifies trends
• Communicate results with management and staff
• Maintain a high level of customer service by prioritizing issues and communicating appropriately with external and internal customers
• Develop cross-team and cross-departmental expertise vital to effectively respond to issues
• Perform periodic review and evaluation of all employees, handling performance issues, training requirements, as fundamental for the development of individual resources as a team
• Ensure teams maintain a high level of responsiveness, communication, professionalism, and overall technical knowledge and intuition for business
• Run, monitor, and report on the services and service levels required to support and deliver an exceptional support experience to customers
• Maintain technical leadership and ensure the support staff is appropriately skilled and trained to deliver excellent technical support and customer service
• Establish working schedules, manage time off to ensure appropriate coverage for operating workloads and task allocations in accordance with studio needs
• Represent the interests of the studio when assessing risk and impact of any change the site depends on
• Perform additional tasks as deemed vital, to include hands on support as necessary

Requirements

• Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field; or 7+ years of equivalent experience
• Knowledgeable in the utilization of ITIL Process Framework principles and possess a technical background working in a classified environment that includes experience in solving problems connectivity issues, hardware and software support, hands-on and remote support
• Experience with Mac and Windows based Operating Systemx
• Superb communication skills and being fluent in English, both written and verbal
• Strong analytical abilities, critical thinking skills, and attention to detail
• Solid understanding of troubleshooting and problem analysis procedures; ability to resolve problems quickly and efficiently
• Strong, hands-on and flexible leadership skills with a dedication to getting results
• Ability to explain sophisticated technical solutions and concepts to non-technical decision-makers
• Ability to lead staff and projects and delegate responsibilities appropriately
• Coordinates among other teams to ensure continuity of support to global customers
• Handles communications with customers and other IT or business groups
• Champion innovation and creativity, diversity and inclusion, collaboration and communication
• Review and update IT support processes and appropriately maintain IT documentation
• Ability to multitask and efficiently handle complicated issues
• Availability to work off-hours and weekends as needed to meet studio needs during high priority periods
• May require travel to other company offices (10%)

Preferred Experience

• Experience with Linux
• Networking and storage management experience

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