Studio Overview

We are Sports Interactive 🎮

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.

Job Title: Senior Operational Readiness Manager 
Team: Production

Reporting into: Production Director

Working Model: Hybrid 2-3 days

Location: Here East, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, E15 2GW

Studio Overview

We are Sports Interactive 🎮

The gaming studio behind: ⚽ Football Manager.

Founded in 1994, Sports Interactive 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
• JIRA on its own is not enough, so build a single source of truth that consolidates production data from multiple sources into a reliable operational view.
• Reduce manual, errorprone planning work by improving data quality and automation where possible. 
   

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. 
• Support teams and leadership in understanding tradeoffs around scope, time, and resourcing. When the plans need to change, what effect does that have on the delivery?
• Help move planning conversations away from debating data accuracy and towards solving real development problems. 
   

Early Risk & Stability Signals 

• Identify and track early warning indicators such as bug convergence trends, stability and any workload pressures on individuals.
• Surface delivery risks earlier and clearly, enabling proactive intervention.
• Focus on insight and prevention 
   

Decision Support & Transparency 

• Provide leadership with clear, evidence-based views of delivery health and operational readiness.
• Enable better decision making by replacing instinct, hope, or volume of opinion with reliable data.
• Support milestone reviews and readiness discussions with clarity and consistency. 
   

Partnership & Enablement 

• Complement Production, QA, and leadership, acting as a support unit and strengthening the studio’s ability to plan, track, and deliver effectively.
• Help build longterm trust in studio data by improving accuracy, consistency, and interpretation over time. 

 
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. Collaboration lets us score more as a team than we could individually.
• Be flexible: We think fast and adapt faster. The football and entertainment worlds never stand still, so we keep progressing and switching things up to stay ahead.
• Stay Tenacious: We don’t overlook the details. Everything we do is about producing the best game possible, in other words, never settle.
• Show Ambition: Let your drive lead the way - Your individual outlook can give everyone the edge. Make the studio’s purpose personal and let your drive lead the way.
• Bring the Passion: Have fun doing your thing - Don’t be fooled, what we do is not a game. Making our players’ passion come to life is our passion.
• Consider the Bigger Picture: Keep things in perspective - We want our impact to be a positive one. From built-in work/life balance to initiatives covering the most important topics of today, we have what matters in focus.