Lead Publishing Producer

Job description

**Responsibilities** - Lead publishing execution across pre-launch, launch, and live service phases, ensuring alignment with product goals, player needs, and North American market expectations. - Act as a technically fluent publishing producer who can identify, prioritize, and drive resolution of production, service, and Live Ops issues in close partnership with development, platform, QA, and operations teams. - Oversee Live Ops at both strategic and operational levels, with a focus on service stability, rapid incident response, issue escalation, content readiness, and continuous optimization of retention, monetization, and engagement. - Translate business, player, and operational needs into clear production requirements, helping technical and cross-functional teams make timely decisions during live service situations. - Own production schedules, milestone tracking, issue follow-up, and cross-functional coordination to ensure timely and scope-accurate delivery across publishing initiatives. - Identify risks early across development, publishing, and live operations, and implement practical mitigation plans to reduce player impact and business disruption. - Drive major updates, events, hotfixes, and lifecycle initiatives, ensuring seamless execution and alignment with global content roadmaps. - Improve publishing and Live Ops workflows by establishing scalable processes, reporting structures, escalation paths, and communication frameworks for fast-moving service environments. - Partner closely with data, marketing, platform, QA, community, and development teams to ensure cohesive execution and high-quality player experiences. - Present KPI trends, incident learnings, production risks, and actionable recommendations to leadership in a clear and practical manner. - Manage external partners or development studios as needed, ensuring alignment with product goals, service standards, and delivery expectations. - Represent NC America’s publishing, Live Ops, and technical service needs within global planning and decision-making discussions. - Foster a culture of accountability, ownership, urgency, and continuous improvement across publishing and Live Ops functions. **Qualifications** - 7+ years of experience in game production, publishing, Live Ops, or technical program/production management, preferably for online or live service titles. - Proven ability to operate in fast-paced live service environments and respond quickly to production, service, player-facing, or technical issues. - Strong understanding of the North American game market, player expectations, platform requirements, and live service operating conditions. - Experience working directly with development, engineering, platform, QA, and operations teams to diagnose issues, define priorities, and drive practical solutions. - Ability to translate technical issues into clear production plans, escalation steps, business impact summaries, and stakeholder communications. - Expertise in Live Ops operations, KPI analysis, incident follow-up, and data-driven decision-making. - Demonstrated ability to manage complex cross-functional projects with multiple stakeholders across development, publishing, marketing, data, QA, and community. - Experience building or improving production, publishing, and Live Ops processes across one or more titles. - Strong analytical, organizational, ownership, and communication skills, with the ability to present complex information to leadership in a clear and actionable way. - Preferred: hands-on experience or strong working knowledge in technical development, backend/service operations, build/release processes, platform certification, tools, or game systems development. Irvine, CA pay range $130,000—$170,000 USD