About Who We Are
Founded in 2005, 2K Games is a global video game company, publishing titles developed by some of the most influential game development studios in the world. Our studios are responsible for developing 2K's portfolio of world-class games across multiple platforms, including Visual Concepts, Gearbox, Firaxis, Hangar 13, CatDaddy, Cloud Chamber, and HB Studios. 2K publishes titles in today's most popular gaming genres, including sports, shooters, action, role-playing, strategy, casual, and family entertainment. The Core Games team is the publishing steward of our growing library of critically-acclaimed Core franchises such as Borderlands, Sid Meier's Civilization, BioShock, Mafia, XCOM and other unannounced titles and franchises.
What We Need
The Senior Director of Data Science is a key leader within the Core Business Unit, responsible for shaping and scaling the analytics strategy that drives product, marketing, and commercial decision-making across 2K's core franchises. You will develop and lead a globally distributed team of data scientists and analysts based in the U.S. and Dublin, Ireland. Together, you'll unlock insights from complex, large-scale player and business data to shape target audience definitions, game design, inform live service strategy, and optimize engagement, retention, and monetization across our AAA portfolio. Your remit spans the full lifecycle of player and commercial performance—guiding predictive modeling, experimentation, player segmentation, lifecycle marketing, and in-market analytics. Partnering closely with Product, Studio, Marketing, and Commercial leaders, you will help build a unified, data-informed view of player experience and business health that drives critical decisions and long-term franchise success.
The scope of this role is significant and critical to 2K's success, leading all aspects of analytical operations for Core, including recurring analysis, ad-hoc insights, and experimentation functions.
What You'll Do
Lead Core's Data Strategy:
You will champion and scale the Core Business Unit's analytics vision to empower data-driven decision-making across game development, live services, marketing, and commercial functions.
Analytics Oversight & Strategy Influence:
- Be the Data Expert: Leverage deep expertise in collecting, integrating, and analyzing diverse data inputs to uncover player opportunities and guide product designs that resonate with clearly defined target audience personas—ultimately enabling better strategic decisions across all facets of publishing.
- Influence Strategy Through Insight: Collaborate with Product, Studio, Marketing, and Commercial partners to ensure Core's analytics inform key decisions and long-term planning, synthesizing objectives, identifying and operating various data sources, toolsets, potential partner needs, and delivering actionable analysis of insights.
Behavioural Insights Synthesis & Telemetry Optimization:
- Drive Live Service & In-Game Player Behaviour Insights: Build systems and teams that surface player behavior, economy, and engagement insights—informing design, monetization, and retention across live and in-development titles.
- Operationalize Experimentation & Machine Learning: Guide the implementation of experimentation platforms and machine learning use cases that drive game experience personalization, feature optimization, and content performance.
- Shape Scalable Infrastructure & Telemetry: Partner with Studio and Central Data teams to ensure the Core BU has clean, scalable data pipelines and instrumentation that support actionable in-game telemetry insights that will empower business decisions.
Audience Definition Enrichment:
- Audience Definition & Personas: Partner with Marketing and Customer Insights in the development of data-driven audience definitions and actionable personas (informed by in-game player telemetry) that guide the full product lifecycle—from product ideation to marketing execution.
Strategic Leadership:
- Ensure Strategic Alignment & Delivery: Own analytics prioritization across Core, managing team bandwidth, execution quality, and stakeholder needs in a dynamic development environment.
- Build & Lead a High-Performing Team: Hire, develop, and mentor a global team of data scientists and analysts specializing across the full 360 data analytics remit; foster a culture of innovation, ownership, and scalable execution.
Who We Think Will Be a Great Fit
- 10+ years of experience in data science or analytics, with significant exposure to gaming, entertainment, or consumer tech—and a track record of turning data into strategic advantage.
- 6+ years leading high-performing analytics or data science teams, including senior-level talent across multiple geographies and functions.
- Proven leadership in live service analytics, including experimentation frameworks, content and feature performance, churn and retention modeling, and player behavioral insights.
- Deep fluency in data systems, including telemetry instrumentation, event tracking, data pipeline design, and QA—delivered in collaboration with engineering and product partners.
- Strong command of player lifecycle metrics, including segmentation, LTV modeling, economy balancing, and engagement KPIs across a portfolio of titles.
- Advanced technical toolkit, including proficiency in SQL and Python or R, and experience with BI and experimentation tools such as Tableau, Looker, or similar.
- Executive presence and influence, with the ability to communicate complex analytics to senior stakeholders and shape product, marketing, and commercial decisions at scale.
Bonus Points
- Deep understanding of free-to-play or multi-platform live service ecosystems, including mobile, PC, and console dynamics.
- Experience leading centralized analytics or data science functions that support multiple games, teams, or business domains.
- Background in AI/ML applications for player modeling, personalization, or predictive insights in interactive experiences.
- Demonstrated ability to scale analytics across a complex portfolio with varied content strategies and business models.
- Passion for games and a player-first mindset that drives empathetic, innovative decision-making.