Wayfarer Operations Program Lead

As a member of Player Experience, you’ll join a team that delights in delivering high-quality support, quick issue resolution, and useful and educational social and community experiences to the people who use Niantic games and products. You’ll work closely with product and development partners to leverage data and customer insights to drive improvements and optimizations to the player experience, maintaining tight feedback loops between our players and cross-functional partners.

As the Wayfarer Operations Program Lead, you’ll manage a vibrant community of players who contribute to Niantic’s crowd-sourced map program, Wayfarer. You’ll oversee and design engaging strategies to enrich the experience of our Wayfarer community, including stewardship of our community ambassador program as well as Wayfarer’s presence at Live Events.

We’re looking for someone with proven communication skills, as well as deep experience and enthusiasm for managing communities. If you're passionate about community, collaboration, and Niantic games, we'd love to hear from you.

Responsibilities

Support Operations Leadership:

• Partner closely with product and engineering partners to ensure Wayfarer support and community programs are up-to-date, accurate, and prepared for new and updated feature launches.
• Oversee Wayfarer operations, including workflow development, issue (bug) tracking and prioritization, and develop internal and external documentation for support agents and Wayfarer community members.
• Oversee the Wayfarer support agents by answering policy questions, reviewing and implementing suggestions for process improvements, staffing on-call, and handling urgent or sensitive escalations.
• Leverage data insights to champion the voice of the user in internal discussions with strategic partners of varying levels and job functions.
• Work with regional partners to collect input on regional and cultural differences and improve implementation plans. Lead the implementation and continuous refinement of global PX standards, driving a consistent and exceptional player experience across all regions.

Live events and community support:

• Build trust and motivate engagement in the Wayfarer Community through direct engagement in the community forum and at live events.
• Manage a group of highly engaged and motivated players who act as community ambassadors by collecting their feedback, cultivating ongoing relationships, and ensuring sustained, high quality output.
• Attend live events to provide onsite support of players, attendees and community members.
• Proactively identify and resolve potential logistical and technical challenges for live events and in-game activities.
• Collaborate with vendors and on-site teams to ensure smooth event delivery.

Master support tools, processes and systems:

• Continuously identify and advocate for improvements to support tools configurations and workflows for increased efficiency and effectiveness.
• Constantly look for solutions to problems and evaluate ways to more efficiently and effectively lead the global support processes.
• Serve as a subject matter expert in support tools, configuring ticketing systems and forums to align with organizational strategy and industry standards.

Collaborate for Success:

• Collaborate with cross-functional team members and partners, including regular and reliable attendance and participation in meetings.
• Facilitate resolutions and collaboration by providing clear and concise reporting on critical information and insights.
• Continuously learn and evolve while collaborating with the global PX team to drive the programmatic improvements and champion the best practices.

Qualifications

• BA/BS degree and 5+ years experience in scaling and enhancing player experience or operational programs for a global digital product.
• Excellent written and verbal communication in English. Fluency in additional languages (especially Japanese) is a plus.
• Validated ability to lead complex projects and collaborate with multiple partners under pressure, thriving in fast-paced, hybrid environments while adapting to challenges.
• A genuine passion for improving player experiences and a strong sense of ownership and initiative.
• A strong belief in Niantic's mission and a passion for its products.
• Ability to work in a fast-paced hybrid environment and handle stress appropriately and/or ability to solve practical problems and be sufficiently adaptable to handle dynamic situations with little advance notice.
• Experience working on cross-functional teams with ability to communicate effectively through written and verbal communications, including asynchronous interactions with others.
• Collaborate with the team in-person and in-office two days per week.

The total compensation package for this position includes a new hire offer base salary range of $121,500 - $135,000 + bonus + equity + benefits.

Individual pay within this salary range is determined by work location and additional factors, including assessed job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can answer any questions about new hire total compensation during the hiring process. An overview of benefit offerings for your location can be found on the careers page.

Join the Niantic team!

Niantic's global-scale augmented reality platform and digital map powers spatial computing experiences in the real world. Incubated out of the Maps team at Google, Niantic first created Ingress and then Pokémon GO, a cultural phenomenon and hit game played by tens of millions of people each month. Niantic’s Lightship platform, which powers Pokémon GO, also supports the company's other games including Pikmin Bloom, Peridot and Monster Hunter Now. Developers use Niantic’s platform to build their own AR applications and experiences, either with the Lightship Platform or directly through the web with 8th Wall.

We believe that cultivating a workplace where our people are supported and included is essential to creating great products our community will love. Our mission emphasizes seeking and hiring diverse voices, including those who are traditionally underrepresented in the technology industry, and we consider this to be one of the most important values we hold close.

Niantic is a hybrid first company. We believe that in person interaction and collaboration fosters creativity, a sense of community, and is critical to our future success as a company. Our hybrid work schedules allow for a mix of remote and in-office work.

We're a hard-working, fun, and exciting group who value intellectual curiosity and a passion for problem-solving! We have growing offices located in San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Bellevue, Kansas, London, Tokyo, Hamburg, Hyderabad, and Zürich. #LI-HYBRID

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