Senior Director of Platform Engineering
Irvine, CA

Job Description

Blizzard Entertainment has been rated for several years by Fortune as one of the "Best Places to Work". We are a community of 4000 global employees who are passionate about not only about gaming, but also the platform and technology that drive player experience. Our goal is to power the underlying epic experiences that our players have enjoyed from our games and experiences.

The Battle.net & Online Products organization is home to 300+ superpowered engineers, program managers, and designers focused on the technology that powers Blizzard Entertainment's games. Whether you're playing one of our titles, chatting with friends, or just shopping online, B&OP ensures that our players are immersed in engaging, exciting, and secure experiences.

If you're a motivating, experienced, and thoughtful technical leader with a track record for building high-performance platform engineering teams, then we've been looking for you.

We are looking for a talented, passionate, and skilled Engineering Director to lead the Battle.net Group Technical Managers (GTMs) to inspire gamers through the creation of the world's best online game platform which enables them to engage in Blizzard's legendary fantasy worlds.

Why work on just one game when you can work on all games? The Battle.net group is responsible for several platform products that are not tied to individual games but shared among all of Blizzard's games present and future. You will interact with technical leaders and executive staff for all games at Blizzard.

Our technology platform, like our users, spans the globe and requires a seasoned engineering leader to keep the big picture in focus while being able to dive into the unique engineering projects and challenges we face daily. You hold the vision for the technical direction, SDLC effectiveness, and operational readiness of groups and ensure your GTMs align to that vision. Decision-making needs to be towards multi-year goals with vision and strategic direction. In this role you will lead and develop a management bench of GTMs and Leads, and be a mentor to your team. In partnership with the Group Program Managers and Group Technical Architects, you will have end-to-end responsibility and ownership of Blizzard's Platform Products.

We are building a platform that is more scalable, more performant, more reliable, and powers our diverse media and games business' needs. We are also enabling new features that can drive significant impact for Blizzard gamers, viewers and customers globally

Responsibilities

* Scale as a broad technical leader of 3 GTMs, 7+ Leads, and 75+ engineers spread across three Groups to help design, implement, and maintain Blizzard's Battle.net platform services.
* Partner with GTMs and technical leads to carefully assess and ensure that software is developing at high quality and meets the platform tenets including availability, scalability, efficiency, security, maintainability, and operability.
* Directly interact with partners, executives, and engineering leaders across Blizzard. Strong presentation skills are a requirement.
* Able to split time effectively managing, developing, and mentoring leaders and setting technical direction while driving alignment.
* Drive Blizzard's strategy for micro-services, platform services, database strategies, API consistency, SDK development, SDLC, big data and analytics, real time stream processing, and machine learning.
* Forward thinking with focus on multi-year goals for engineering and subsequently executing against them.
* Hire and retain staff to enhance and build our engineering and technical design talent.
* Assist in the technical aspects of contract negotiation.

Requirements

* Technical, managerial, and leadership skills at the executive or technical director level.
* A minimum of 10 years' engineering experience in distributed systems, servers, networking, test, cloud computing, big data, or other mission critical production software.
* Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience.
* Familiarity with Java, Javascript Frameworks (node, angular, react), and C++
* Familiarity with network protocols
* Familiarity with Open Source software concepts and operating models
* Experience and passion for building highly parallelized and scalable distributed systems.
* Demonstratable design skills to build world class solutions at the enterprise scale.
* Significant experience in managing the SDLC of products ranging from APIs, SDKs, to complex online services and composite systems.
* Experience leading other technical managers across multiple disciplines through transition in a professional and respectful way.
* Exhibit exceptional leadership skills that include, but do not limit to selection, performance management, talent planning, and development and recognition.
* Strong effective communications and presentation skills and the ability to influence at all levels.
* Familiarity with the procurement process as it relates to contract negotiations for software development, SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable law, and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.

Blizzard Entertainment is a global company committed to growing our employees along with the business. We offer generous benefits and perks with an eye on providing true work / life balance. We've worked hard to foster an intensely collaborative and creative environment, a diverse and inclusive employee culture, and training and opportunity for professional growth. Our people are everything. Our core values are real, and our mission has never changed. We are dedicated to creating the most epic entertainment experiences ever. Join us!