Digital Operations And Quality Of Experience

WORK OPTION: 4 days a week in the Secaucus, NJ office including nights, weekends and holidays

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a global sports and media organization with the mission to inspire and connect people everywhere through the power of basketball. Built around five professional sports leagues: the NBA, WNBA, NBA G League, NBA 2K League and Basketball Africa League, the NBA has established a major international presence with games and programming available in 214 countries and territories in more than 50 languages, and merchandise for sale in more than 200 countries and territories on all seven continents. NBA rosters at the start of the 2023-24 season featured a record 125 international players from 40 countries and territories. NBA Digital’s assets include NBA TV, NBA.com, the NBA App and NBA League Pass. The NBA has created one of the largest social media communities in the world, with more than 2.3 billion likes and followers globally across all leagues, team and player platforms. NBA Cares, the NBA's global social responsibility platform, partners with renowned community-based organizations around the world to address important social issues in the areas of education, inclusion, youth and family development, and health and wellness.

Position Summary

The Senior Director of Digital Operations and Quality of Experience will develop, own and execute processes to ensure operational excellence for digital products across NBA, WNBA GLeague, 2K and BAL. Candidate will lead a global team of digital specialists focusing on building trust across the organization and executing enhancements to productivity, quality assurance and efficiency for digital product operations, and shall be key team member throughout the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC).

Candidate will be responsible for managing the VIP digital experience, including direct support for BoG members, managing executive and senior communications, and along with the DOC team, will provide frontline support to customer service and product delivery organizations.

Candidate will work with DTC leadership to evaluate and budget operational functions while also performing regular forecast checkpoints and capital planning with department management, facilities and finance. Candidate will manage defining annual improvements to the physical DOC space.

Candidate should be a highly resourceful individual who can display an executive disposition when communicating to all levels of the organization and owners. Candidate must work well in a fast-paced 24x7 work environment, displaying strong problem solving skills, exceptional work ethic, ability to read environments and think outside of the box. Candidate will have a strong knowledge of video technology, platforms and technical systems.

Major Responsibilities

• Manage and run 24x7 Global Digital Operations Centers (Secaucus, NJ and Mumbai, India).
• Provide critical thinking, quantitative analysis and operational recommendations to the leadership team; relentlessly measure teams and vendor performance; review current operational process and implement new methods to improve efficiency informed by data
• Develop and administer short and long-range plans that optimize the use of personnel, materials and financial resources; introduce real time communication tools to ensure immediate responses and remediation.
• Recruiting, hiring, orienting, and training staff of digital specialists to assist with the day-to-day Operations and Quality assurance
• Work directly with the leadership team and serve as the day-to-day lead on DOC budgetary concerns
• Ensure escalations to the appropriate individuals/groups are done early and often
• Provide timely and thorough responses to inquiries from senior leadership including the BoG.
• Creating and maintaining a payment tracking schedule for all vendors, contractors and production partners
• Manage Commissioner and VIP account services, including one to one support as necessary.
• Manage projects through coordination of delivery schedules across Product Development, Content and Media Technology departments; identify product and/or design flaws to be addressed by the Product Development teams via coordinated bug scrub sessions.
• Oversee roadmap for consolidation of other support groups into singular consolidated support organization.
• Own definition, design and delivery of NextGen operational QoS/QoE dashboards, tooling and runbooks for NBA and Partner developed services.
• Prepare documentation to communicate ideas, gain stakeholder approvals, report project statuses, measure & track KPIs for the NBA’s NextGen operations monitoring product
• Collaborate on roadmaps with other teams and stakeholders to drive direction and priorities, both strategic and tactical
• Identify, track, prioritize and drive resolution of project/program level issues, leveraging lessons learned from prior experience and work to address and mitigate systemic issues
• Identify product launch risks and develop risk mitigation techniques to minimize issues
• Manage research requests for competitive and new digital technologies to support innovation opportunities for NBA and its affiliated digital products
• Direct team to message boards and social media outlets and report on fans positive/negative feedback relating to NBA digital products
• Provide onsite operations support for NBA Tentpole evets, such as NBA All Star.
• Design, develop and implement processes monitor delivery of NextGen content feeds to consumers and content partners such as WSC.
• Design, develop and oversee implementation of “failover app” for outage situations; enable VIP access to bypass blackout situations.
• Manage competitor subscription services as well as device inventory, ordering, logistics and budgeting for NextGen teams.

Required Skills/Knowledge/Experience

• Strong attention to detail and ability to manage multiple projects at once
• Able to consolidate and summarize status, root cause and other relevant information and present it to leadership
• Experience in proactively identifying and resolving issues and make recommendations for improvements to existing processes.
• Expertise in SDLC via Agile methodologies (SAFe preferred)
• Taking a problem and diving deep into the issue then provide a simple explanation and solution
• Experience with forecasting and preparing an annual budget
• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and cross-functional project management skills
• Comfortable with proposing new ideas among various internal stakeholders and business units
• Previous hiring and management experience
• Experience scheduling staff for a 24/7 365 cycle
• Possesses strong leadership skills and have a demonstrated track record of leading individuals
• Multiple years in digital product development or digital project management
• Knowledge of the technical side of video streaming and encoding, including QoS and QoE tools
• Technical experience working with app technologies
• Technical competence and ability to adapt to new technologies and lead teams through these changes
• Ability to quickly adapt to changing priorities
• Excellent oral and written communication skills
• Team player with an interest in maintaining positive team dynamics
• Knowledge of basketball and the NBA

• Proficiency in Word, Excel and PowerPoint

Educational Background Required

• Bachelor’s degree in related field required
• 8+ year’s experience working in technical support
• 5+ year’s experience managing and leading a technical support organization

Salary Range: [[$200,000 - $220,000]]

The NBA does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firms or any other third parties. Any unsolicited resume sent to the NBA will be considered NBA property, and the NBA will not pay a fee should it hire the subject of any unsolicited resume.

The NBA considers applicants for all positions on the basis of merit, qualifications, and business needs, and without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, alienage or citizenship status, ancestry, marital status, genetic predisposition or carrier status, veteran status, familial status, status as a victim of domestic violence, or any other status or characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.

About the NBA
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a global sports and media organization with the mission to inspire and connect people everywhere through the power of basketball. Built around five professional sports leagues: the NBA, WNBA, NBA G League, NBA 2K League and Basketball Africa League, the NBA has established a major international presence with games and programming available in 215 countries and territories in more than 50 languages, and merchandise for sale in more than 200 countries and territories on all seven continents. NBA rosters at the start of the 2021-22 season featured a record 121 international players from 40 countries. NBA Digital’s assets include NBA TV, NBA.com, the NBA App and NBA League Pass. The NBA has created one of the largest social media communities in the world, with 2.1 billion likes and followers globally across all league, team, and player platforms. Through NBA Cares, the league addresses important social issues by working with internationally recognized youth-serving organizations that support education, youth and family development, and health-related causes.