Senior Operational Readiness Manager

Functional and Analytics analytics On Off The gaming studio behind: ⚽ Football Manager. Founded in 1994, Sports Interactive (SI) became a wholly owned subsidiary of SEGA Europe in 2006. Based at the Here East technology hub in Stratford, East London, the SI team continues to expand as we bring our titles to an ever-growing audience across an increasing variety of platforms. To support our growth, we welcome the opportunity to connect with passionate people with the drive to match our ambitions and initiative to realise your individual potential.

Position Overview

As Sports Interactive has grown, so has the complexity of how we build and ship our games. Larger teams, deeper dependencies, and higher expectations mean we need confidence in our plans, timelines, and delivery quality. This role is responsible for establishing a clear, trusted view of development reality across the studio, where we are, where we’re heading, and how confident we should be in our delivery across Football Manager on all platforms. This role owns the data, tooling, and insight required to answer the question as to whether we are ready to ship but won’t make final delivery decision. It is tasked with ensuring leadership is never surprised late, and that “are we ready?” is answered with facts, not optimism. The Senior Operational Readiness Manager will have PMO mindset but also be accountable for readiness.

Key Responsibilities

• Building the single source of truth. Own JIRA at a studio level, working with Production, Development and QA to understand current issues and build a new JIRA database, ensuring workflows, fields, and dashboards addressing departmental feedback from the current implementation.
• Operational Planning & Forecasting: Turn historical data into credible planning inputs, including velocity trends, bugfix rates, and capacity modelling. Improve confidence in milestone forecasting by grounding plans in evidence rather than optimism.
• Early Risk & Stability Signals: Identify and track early warning indicators such as bug convergence trends, stability and any workload pressures on individuals.
• Decision Support & Transparency: Provide leadership with clear, evidence-based views of delivery health and operational readiness.
• Partnership & Enablement: Complement Production, QA, and leadership, acting as a support unit and strengthening the studio’s ability to plan, track, and deliver effectively.
• Submissions: This role will have line management responsibility for the Submissions Manager, ensuring certifications, age ratings and platform submissions are fully integrated into the studio’s broader operational readiness view.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

Ideally, you’ve experience doing a role like this before having worked either in the Games Industry or some other large software delivery environment. You’ll understand the challenges of development and the wants and needs of different departments. Deep experience with JIRA, including workflow design, dashboards, and data integrity. Developer mindset with a vision or track record of being able to pull in different data sources, interpret the data and turn it into clear, actionable insight. Comfortable working with senior stakeholders and challenging assumptions constructively. Highly organised, pragmatic, and focused on outcomes.

Benefits of Working at Sports Interactive:

• Private Healthcare and Dental Cover.
• Contributory Pension Scheme (employer contributions up to 7% of annual salary).
• Eligibility to participate in the company’s discretionary bonus scheme.
• Access to life assurance and income protection Cover.
• Access to Travel Insurance for yourself and your family.
• Confidential mental health, therapy and coaching support with subsidised access.
• Flexible gym and fitness options via our benefits platform.
• Access to on-site physiotherapy and massage services.
• Free onsite evening bar in the Sports Interactive London HQ.
• A well-stocked breakfast bar with cereals, fruit, tea and coffee.
• Free access to games released under the SEGA Europe umbrella.
• Regular events and experiences in collaboration with our partnered football clubs.
• Multiple clubs and societies to join (including book club, art workshops and more).
• Personalised football shirt upon passing probation.
• Trophies & gift cards for length of service milestones.
• Cupcakes sent to you on your birthday.

What is it like to work here?

We approach everything with passion, whether that is making our mark on the gaming and football industries or doing our bit for the world around us. We want to share that outlook with everyone who shows up to work here each day. For us, talent wins games, but teamwork wins titles. Collaboration is the key to constantly topping our best. We believe everyone matters, no matter which part of the business you are in, so we encourage and support our people in driving your own growth and realising your full potential. But, more than anything else, we are a team. A team with a down-to-earth dynamic, that has a lot of fun doing what we do. And whether that’s technical tweaks or fine-tuning our creative process, everything is geared at producing the best game possible for our players. To do that, we need to be tenacious and move quickly and not be afraid of switching things up. It is these principles that have enabled us to produce a game that has defined year after year, and that will continue to push us for many more to come.

We’re also a London Living Wage employer, boast one of the lowest staff turnover rates in the industry and are proud to have won the ‘Best Places to Work’ award by Gamesindustry.biz in large company category in 2023. We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from any relevant candidate irrespective of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, religion, or belief. SI is proudly a Disability Confident Committed employer, and we are dedicated to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible. Our studio has disabled access and facilities but please ensure you advise us if you require any other reasonable adjustments to be made to support you during the recruitment process.

Our Values:

• Keep collaborating: Teamwork wins titles - Here, ideas belong to everyone, whatever department you’re part of.
• Be flexible: We think fast and adapt faster.
• Stay Tenacious: We don’t overlook the details.
• Show Ambition: Let your drive lead the way.
• Bring the Passion: Have fun doing your thing.
• Consider the Bigger Picture: Keep things in perspective.