Senior Director, Global Technology Services

Job Description

WB Games is a leader in the games industry across all game platforms and mobile devices. Our diverse and inclusive workforce creates and brings to life the most beloved characters, franchises, heroes, and wizards in the world. We are fans of what we make and proud of what we do. We have studios and offices across the globe.

The Job

The Senior Director, GTS is responsible for
• facilitating the creation of great games in close collaboration with leadership and development teams and ensure the business needs are driving IT strategy and alignment.
• overseeing, in collaboration with Studio Heads, local on-site IT leaders focused on service levels, capabilities and professional development
• partnering with studio and business leaders to develop and execute a multi-year IT roadmap and strategic plan to establish and maintain an IT infrastructure that can support studio needs and WB Games' aggressive growth and expansion plans, while operating at a high level of efficiency
• developing a hybrid operating model that can support global studio IT needs and growth.
• directing the efforts of a team of studio and central IT leads and shared service teams responsible for keeping critical IT services such as workstations, server infrastructure, networked storage, collaboration tools (Box, Confluence, Jira, Slack), data transfer services (Aspera), and cloud services (O365, AWS) running at peak performance, with appropriate security patches, and working across all the studios to mitigate negative business impact
• collaborating across WB Games studios to help identify, promote, and share best IT practices, tools, and processes; assessing and developing optimal levels of automation and standardization across studios for applications, infrastructure, tools and operating procedures, while taking full account of differing studio needs and requirements
• growing and developing the shared service organization into a highly effective team focused on helping to improve the overall efficiency, effectiveness, reliability, scalability, and security of WB Games' IT infrastructure and service offerings
• inspiring and leading the global IT team to provide high quality service delivery to the studios, significantly improve information security posture, and improve cost efficiency across the global network
• ensuring all studio and global IT systems are secure and adhere to increasing security standards; overseeing responses to and remediation efforts surrounding any security incidents or audits
• being a proactive and constructive partner to the studios, WB Games Corporate, and WBT/Warner Media/Warner Bros. Discovery, ensuring appropriate adherence to WB/WM/WBD standards and capturing the benefits of being a part of a larger organization
• directing effective vendor and deal evaluation, leading/assisting in structuring and negotiating contracts, and determining studio allocations for key vendors/contracts impacting multiple studios
• working with Finance to prepare capital budgets and forecasts and determine studio allocations
• performing due-diligence and integration efforts around potential merger and acquisition projects

This role requires strong leadership skills, a very proactive and collaborative working style, the ability to navigate ambiguity and be effective in a matrixed organization, a commitment to developing talent in the organization, strong communication and competent technical skills.

The Daily
• Strategy: Setting team's vision, developing roadmap with key stakeholders, executing plan, managing stakeholder communication and buy-in
• Service management: planning with, responding to, and providing service and care to studios, PD, and Central Technology Group
• Cost management: Procurement, cost management, and driving cost efficiencies
• Information security: Ensuring proper security approach, responding to security issues
• Organizational management: Managing and inspiring IT leads, building shared service capabilities, developing talent across the team
• Aligning and integrating with broader WBD IT organization

The Essentials

Work Experience
• 12+ years IT management experience with games or other software development companies.
• 12+ years overall relevant business experience.
• Proven experience building relationships and ensuring end-user satisfaction across a large, distributed organization.
• Demonstrated success in managing technical services across remote sites with matrixed staffing models.
• Must be able to work with independent studio management and IT staff to build consensus for policies and initiatives.
• Experience successfully working within the context of a large corporation, balancing enterprise and business-specific requirements and constraints.

Education, Certification, Professional and Technical Training
• Bachelor Degree in IT, Computer Science, Computer Engineering or similar related fields or equivalent work experience is required.

Knowledge/Skills
• Ability to work collaboratively across groups of varying discipline and level, and communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical people.
• People leadership skills, especially with regard to managing remote teams across several times zones.
• Passion for transforming an organization and driving continuous improvement.
• Critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
• Experience building relationships and ensuring end-user satisfaction across a large distributed organization.
• Customer service and collaboration skills with a consultative approach.
• Strong project and technical management skills.
• Strong written and oral communication and presentation skills.
• In-depth knowledge of all phases of IT system development lifecycle, including quality assurance and support.
• Technical expertise with regard to networks, cloud management, storage, and security.
• Games industry related experience is helpful, in particular version control software (eg Perforce, SVN) and collaboration tools (eg Jira, Team Foundation Server, Slack). Experience in supporting teams using creative industry applications such as Maya, Adobe Creative Suite, 3ds Max is also an advantage.
• Understanding of software development lifecycle (SDLC).
• Strong negotiation and vendor management skills.

The Nice to Haves
• Masters Degree in IT, Computer Science, Computer Engineering or similar related fields is highly desirable.
• Knowledge of and passion for video games is a plus.

Warner Bros. Discovery embraces the opportunity to build a workforce that reflects the diversity of our society and the world around us. Being an equal opportunity employer means that we take seriously our responsibility to consider qualified candidates on the basis of merit, without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, mental or physical disability, and genetic information, marital status, citizenship status, military status, protected veteran status or any other category protected by law.

If you're a qualified candidate with a disability and you need a reasonable accommodation in order to apply for this position, please contact us at recruitadmin@warnermedia.com.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-gm8py6-13-59-61-119-42 in your application.