Lead Technical Program Manager - Activision

ACTIVISION PUBLISHING, INC.; Santa Monica (CA); On-site; USD 114,000 - 211,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

Paid time off

Retirement plan with company match

Job summary

Activision Publishing, Inc. is seeking a Lead Technical Program Manager to orchestrate data activation, analytics engineering, and platform integrations across studios and business teams.

You will translate priorities into executable plans, drive complex programs, and partner with data engineers, product leaders, and platform teams to ensure reliable, scalable data solutions. Based in Los Angeles, the role emphasizes onsite delivery with Monday–Thursday in the Pen Factory office, strong SQL

Qualifications

• 7+ years of technical program, product, or project management experience with data/engineering teams.
• Hands-on data analysis/engineering background preferred; strong technical depth.
• Proficient in SQL for schema inspection, validation, and data quality governance.
• Experience leading cross-functional programs across multiple teams and orgs.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end planning and delivery across data activation, analytics, and data platform initiatives.
• Lead program across Studios, Analytics, Finance, Marketing Tech, and engineering teams.
• Shape roadmaps, align team capacity with priorities and commitments.
• Coordinate release planning, risk decisions, and operational readiness.
• Communicate progress, risks, and trade-offs to stakeholders and senior leaders.

Skills

SQL

Data platforms

AI fluency

Program management

Cross-functional leadership

Communication

Jira

Confluence

Scrum/Kanban

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience

Tools

Git

dbt

Airflow

Spark

Kafka

Job description

Lead Technical Program Manager

Job Description: Your Mission Publishing’s Data and Analytics Engineering team builds and operates the data products, pipelines, and integrations that turn trusted data into action across our Studios, Analytics, Product, Finance, and Marketing Technology ecosystem. We are looking for a Lead Technical Project Manager to serve as the connective layer across these disciplines - bringing structure to ambiguous problems, translating business priorities into executable technical plans, and driving complex initiatives from intake through launch. This is a highly cross-functional role for someone who combines strong program leadership with practical data and software fluency. You will partner closely with data engineers, analytics engineers, product and business leaders, and platform teams to align priorities, manage dependencies, resolve issues, and ensure our solutions are reliable, scalable, and useful. This role is based in our Los Angeles (Pen Factory) office and follows an onsite work schedule of Monday through Thursday. Work arrangements may change at the company's discretion to meet business needs.

What You Bring to the Table

Priorities can shift quickly in a fast-paced environment, so this role includes, but is not limited to, the following responsibilities:

• Own end-to-end planning and delivery across a portfolio of data activation, analytics engineering, and data platform integration initiatives.
• Serve as the program lead across Studios, Analytics, Finance, Marketing Technology, and engineering teams—clarifying goals, requirements, ownership, dependencies, and success measures.
• Partner with engineering and product leadership to shape roadmaps, sequence work, and align team capacity with business priorities and customer commitments.
• Perform SQL-based validation or optimization and first-pass troubleshooting to accelerate issue resolution and route deeper investigation effectively.
• Drive execution across concurrent workstreams by managing milestones, risks, trade-offs, decisions, release coordination, migrations, and operational readiness.
• Use technical expertise to understand data flows, schemas, APIs, models, and system integrations.
• Establish scalable operating mechanisms for intake, prioritization, status reporting, decision logs, documentation, service ownership, and governance-related workflows.
• Communicate progress, risks, and trade-offs clearly to engineering teams, business partners, and senior leaders, tailoring the level of detail to the audience.
• Define and track meaningful outcomes—including adoption, data quality, reliability, timeliness, and delivery predictability—and use retrospectives to improve how teams work together.

Player Profile

• 7+ years of technical program, product, or project management experience working directly with data, software, platform, or infrastructure engineering teams.
• Prior hands‑on experience as a data analyst/engineer, technical analyst, or another technical individual contributor is strongly preferred; equivalent technical depth is also welcome.
• Working proficiency with SQL, including the ability to inspect schemas, validate outputs, investigate data quality issues, and govern access.
• Practical understanding of the data lifecycle, including ingestion, transformation, orchestration, batch and streaming pipelines, APIs, semantic or metrics layers, and downstream activation.
• Proven ability to lead complex, cross-functional programs across multiple teams and organizations while navigating ambiguity and evolving priorities.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to translate technical concepts, constraints, and trade‑offs for non-technical stakeholders and senior leadership.
• Exceptional prioritization, time management, and follow-through, with a bias toward action and the ability to distinguish urgent work from important long-term investments.
• Experience with Jira, Confluence, Slack, M365, or similar collaboration tools, and comfort working across Scrum, Kanban, or hybrid delivery models.
• AI fluency, including experience supporting AI/ML programs or using AI-assisted tools to improve planning, documentation, QA, incident analysis, or self-service data access.
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience.
• Extra Points Experience with modern data platforms and tooling such as Git, lakehouse or cloud data warehouse architectures, dbt, Airflow, Spark, Kafka, data observability, catalogs, or governance platforms.
• Experience with data activation or Marketing Technology ecosystems, including customer data platforms, reverse ETL, identity resolution, campaign platforms, experimentation, or measurement and conversion APIs.
• Experience supporting Finance, enterprise reporting, privacy- or compliance-sensitive workflows, or distributed multi-studio environments.
• Demonstrated portfolio-level leadership and mentoring experience for Lead consideration.
• PMP, Certified Scrum Master, PRINCE2, or similar certification.

Your Platform

Your Platform Headquartered in Santa Monica, Activision brings together teams across Marketing, PR, Sales, Supply Chain, HR, IT, Legal, Facilities, Finance, and other disciplines to create exceptional entertainment experiences. Our World At Activision, we strive to create the most iconic brands. We’re driven by our mission to deliver unrivaled gaming experiences for the world to enjoy, together. We are home to some of the most beloved entertainment franchises including Call of Duty®, Crash Bandicoot™, Tony Hawk’s™ Pro Skater™, and Guitar Hero®. As a leading worldwide developer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment and products, our “press start” is simple: delight hundreds of millions of players around the world with innovative, fun, thrilling, and engaging entertainment experiences. We’re not just looking back at our decades-long legacy; we’re forging ahead to keep advancing gameplay with some of the most popular titles and sophisticated technology in the world. We have bold ambitions to create the most inclusive company as we know our success comes from the passionate, creative, and diverse teams within our organization. We’re in the business of delivering fun and unforgettable entertainment for our player community to enjoy. And our future opportunities have never been greater — this could be your opportunity to level up.

Rewards

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance; 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching; Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave; Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others; If the Company requires that you move geographic locations for the job, then you may also be eligible for relocation assistance. Eligibility to participate in these benefits may vary for part time and temporary full-time employees and interns with the Company. You can learn more by visiting https://www.benefitsforeveryworld.com/.

In the U.S., the standard base pay range for this role is $114,080.00 - $211,048.00 Annual. These values reflect the expected base pay range of new hires across all U.S. locations. Ultimately, your specific range and offer will be based on several factors, including relevant experience, performance, and work location. Your Talent Professional can share this role’s range details for your local geography during the hiring process. In addition to a competitive base pay, employees in this role may be eligible for incentive compensation. Incentive compensation is not guaranteed. While we strive to provide competitive offers to successful candidates, new hire compensation is negotiable. Activision Blizzard, Inc. is the world’s largest interactive entertainment company, with operations across North America, Europe, and Asia. We are home to some of the most beloved entertainment franchises including Call of Duty®, Skylanders®, World of Warcraft®, Overwatch®, Diablo®, Candy Crush™ and Bubble Witch™. Our combined entertainment network delights hundreds of millions of monthly active users in 196 countries, making us the largest gaming network on the planet! We’re proud to be recognized as one of FORTUNE’s “100 Best Companies To Work For®” for five consecutive years and have earned a spot on FORTUNE’s “Most Admired Companies,” and “Future 50” lists. Our 10,000+ global employees are some of the best and brightest talents across entertainment, media, and technology.

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