Live Operations Specialist

Job Title: Live Operations SpecialistDepartment: Live OperationsLocation: HARDlight Studio, Leamington SpaWorking Model: Hybrid – Monday & Friday working from home, Tuesday to Thursday in the studio. Why HARDlight? HARDlight studio is best known for bringing Sonic the Hedgehog and Crazy Taxi to mobile devices.      As a trusted internal SEGA of Europe studio, our title list continues to expand, with us releasing two titles to Apple Arcade: ChuChu Rocket! Universe and Sonic Racing in September 2019 and most recently Sonic Dream Team in 2023.    We strive every day to ensure that the studio has an inspiring and creative atmosphere and we’re proud of the diverse team we have built who are incredibly passionate about making quality games. We strive to maintain the studio atmosphere we have created, a fun, open and engaging space to work in. We are looking for people to not only join but enhance our studio! You'll have access to a comprehensive flexible benefits package that includes ULEV car salary sacrifice, life assurance, income protection, private healthcare & dental insurance schemes and an enhanced contributory pension scheme. In addition to our benefits package, we also offer:

• Wellbeing and work-life balance support that includes duvet day, volunteer day, free health check and annual flu jab.
• An extra 20 flexible working-from-home days.
• Refresh station within the studio to help with the cost of living.
• Calendar of social events including team building and Christmas parties.
• Competitive salary and a fantastic bonus scheme so that you can stay motivated and focused on making HARDlight the best it can be.
• For gaming buffs, we offer free SEGA games on Steam and a home technology scheme.
• Fitness fanatics will love our discounted gym membership and ride-to-work scheme.
• We pride ourselves on having flexible working hours to help work fit around you.
• We want to help and support you in achieving your ambitions and offer 12 days of training a year to help improve your skills to become better equipped to further your career.  

Why You: You have considerable experience in Live Operations within the games industry, having worked on mobile free-to-play titles. Essentially, you have experience working as part of a team to plan and execute live ops strategy, and constantly strive to maximise player engagement and lifetime value. Responsibilities: 

• Own the planning and execution of Live Operations across all live-operated games, defining and setting up the in-game actions, promotions and live experiments.
• Monitor, report and continuously aim to improve the performance of all live activations and features against targets with a focus on maximising the financial success of live games.
• Collaborate with key stakeholders to define content, promotion and live event strategy in our live games and determine how to execute those plans with available resources and tools.
• Plan and execute marketing communication strategies via in-game, push communications and Live Ops cards: work with marketing art on asset creation, coordinate their localization and optimize their scheduling and display.
• Drive the processes behind preparing, testing and deploying live game data and all live features, targeting high quality while remaining flexible to adapt to arising opportunities.
• Coordinate our localisation process from the game perspective to ensure all communications, live activities and contents receive translations on time.
• Champion the improvements of live operations tools, processes and internal knowledgebase for the benefit of Live Operations efficiency.
• Mentor junior members of the Live Operations team.
• Benchmark and analyse Live Operations best practices in the industry and use these to experiment with and innovate in all areas of live operations.

Required Knowledge, Skills & Experience:

• Considerable experience in a live operations role in the video games industry.
• A solid understanding of live operations in games and how they relate to key metrics and player motivation.
• Comfortable mastering tools and processes.
• Strong communication skills both written and verbal, and confidence to write player-facing copies
• Excellent organisational and time management skills, comfortable with frequently switching between tasks and projects and adapting to changing requirements.
• Ability to solve problems and execute plans using a combination of common sense, creative (out of the box) and analytical thinking.
• A commercial acumen with a strong focus on driving business performance.
• Demonstrate good judgement, prioritization, and decision-making skills even under pressure.

Interview Process: 

• 30-minute MS teams interview – Recruiter (SEGA Europe)
• 45-minute MS teams interview – Product & Live Operations Director (HARDlight) + Take-home live operations assessment (details will be provided by the Recruiter)
• 1hr 30-minutes studio interview (presentation & assessment) – Live Operations & Data team (HARDlight)

Our Commitment to Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging: We want people of all backgrounds to see themselves represented and included in our work, so we actively seek to diversify our team and bring more voices to the table. All applicants are welcome! If you require any reasonable adjustments in order to apply or to participate in the recruitment process, please contact us at talentacquisition@sega.co.uk.