Electronic Arts

The Opportunity

XO Creative Studio sits at the center of the Experiences (XO) org, bringing creative excellence, production discipline, and cultural relevance to how we show up across the player journey. The organization has a critical need for a senior operations leader to translate leadership priorities into clear plans, action, and measurable progress, strengthening how we operate, allocate resources, and partner across XO Creative Studio and XO centers of excellence.

This role is a high-impact operating partner to the SVP XO Creative Studio, designed to increase clarity, momentum, and operational excellence across a multi-disciplinary creative organization. 

The Role

The Senior Director, Managing Director is accountable for the operating system of XO Creative Studio: how the team plans, tracks, decides, spends, prioritizes, and delivers, internally and in partnership with Experiences COEs and Partners (e.g., Finance, People/HR, Business Ops, Comms, enterprise enablement partners).

This leader ensures the Creative Studio has the right governance, operating rhythm, and budget management to deliver against priorities, while removing friction and enabling creative leaders to focus on craft and outcomes.

What You’ll Do

1) Run the Creative Studio Operating Agenda (SVP Operating Partner)

• Lead the strategic execution of the SVP XO Creative Studio’s vision: translate priorities into operating plans, milestones, and clear ownership.

• Create/own the operating rhythm: leadership team meetings, business reviews, quarterly planning, offsites, and action tracking, ensuring decisions turn into follow-through and results.

• Drive cross-functional alignment across Creative, Creative Production, Events, and Music, surfacing dependencies, clearing blockers, and maintaining pace.

2) Organization Management, Clarity, and Team Enablement

• Partner with SVP and People/HR to strengthen organizational design, role clarity, and operating norms that scale with the team.

• Establish consistent leadership mechanisms (goal setting, performance rhythms, talent review inputs, engagement signals) that support a high-performing creative organization.

• Build a culture of accountability, transparency, and collaboration, without constraining creative autonomy. 

3) Planning, Budget Management, and Resourcing (Creative Studio)

• Own the Creative Studio annual planning and budget management process (OpEx and applicable program budgets), including spend tracking, re-forecasting, trade-off recommendations, and investment alignment.

• Stand up clear governance for headcount planning, vendor/agency usage, and resourcing decisions in partnership with Finance and Talent, ensuring plans match priorities.

• Provide the SVP and leadership team with decision-ready visibility into financial health, constraints, and options, helping the organization operate with discipline and agility.

4) Optimization and COE Connectivity Across Experiences (XO)

• Act as the primary connector between Creative Studio and Experiences centers of excellence, standardizing how work moves through intersections (intake, prioritization, approvals, measurement).

• Identify operational friction and drive continuous improvement through better tools, processes, and shared ways of working.

• Where helpful, implement dashboards/scorecards and lightweight systems that increase speed, confidence, and decision quality (borrowing from effectiveness / systems-thinking models).

5) Portfolio Execution and Program Leadership

• Lead complex, cross-team initiatives (e.g., new operating models, capability pilots, workflow transformations, organizational scaling efforts) from ambiguity to execution.

• Create strong project/program management practices: timelines, RAID logs, dependency management, and executive communications, so priorities don’t stall.

6) Communications, Executive Materials, and Readouts

• Own leadership-level preparation for reviews, milestones, and executive touch points, ensuring narratives are clear, aligned, and supported by data.

• Create consistent progress reporting on priorities, risks, and outcomes, so leaders can make fast, high-quality decisions.

Who You Are

• A senior operations leader who can turn strategy into execution. You bring structure, clarity, and momentum to complex, creative, matrixed environments.

• Trusted partner to executive leaders; you’re comfortable in “gray space” and can build alignment without formal authority.

• Strong financial and planning fluency: budgets, resourcing, prioritization, and trade-offs.

• Experienced operating across multiple functions and COEs; you know how to build governance that enables (not slows) teams.

• Change leader with a builder mindset, able to design systems and then embed them into real operating behavior.

Qualifications

• Ideally 12–15+ years in business operations, operational leadership, program leadership, creative operations, or related roles in media/entertainment/tech/gaming (or similarly complex orgs).

• 5+ years leading teams (directly and/or through influence), including developing senior talent.

• Demonstrated success building and running operating rhythms, planning cycles, and cross-functional governance at scale.

• Strong executive communication and stakeholder management skills; experience supporting senior leadership teams.

• Tool fluency: planning and project/program management tools, GSuite/MSFT, dashboards/analytics literacy.