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The Halo franchise encompasses games, television series, novels, comics, licensed collectibles, apparel, and more. We’re constantly evolving and expanding into new arenas of entertainment, and we need a talented, service-oriented professional to help drive the backbone of our studio’s technological excellence. As our IT User Support Manager, you’ll empower our teams to achieve more by ensuring they have the reliable tools, hardware configurations, and efficient service management processes needed to create the next generation of gaming experiences.

As a Corporate Tech Support Lead, you will partner closely with our internal development, production, and creative teams to provide top-tier frontline support. You will oversee managed service provider(s) and contingent staffing, refine our ITIL-based processes, and optimize our equipment lifecycles ensuring everyone in the studio can focus on building immersive worlds and captivating stories. With your guidance, we’ll maintain a secure, high-performing environment, streamline project timelines, and ultimately reduce friction so our creators can focus on delivering great experiences.

You will foster a collaborative culture where best-in-class hardware setups, timely asset provisioning, and seamless support operations become standard. This includes evaluating cutting-edge technologies, driving process improvements, and championing practices that enhance productivity and user satisfaction. By connecting with stakeholders across all disciplines you will help ensure that our technical foundation supports and accelerates the realization of our creative vision.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead and provide strategic frontline technical support to Halo Studios employees, both remotely and on-site, resolving complex hardware/software issues and setting up advanced game development environments (including proprietary tools and Unreal Engine).

• Lead and manage the operations of managed service teams, ensuring seamless and efficient support for studio employees and partners, while holding the MSA accountable for meeting SLAs and KPIs that align with theexpectations outlined in the MSA contract.

• Champion the implementation and continuous improvement of current ITIL practices for service management, ensuring strict adherence to incident, problem, and change management processes in Jira Service Management, and driving overall service excellence.

• Track and report key metrics (e.g., productivity, product usage, tickets, satisfaction) to drive insights that optimize support services and enhance the user experience, including identifying opportunities to collaborate with engineering and security teams to address recurring issues by implementing process changes, resolving the root cause, or adding automation to ultimately reduce ticket volume and improve overall efficiency.

• Contribute to designing and improving tools for local support, identifying business needs and opportunities, and defining the requirements for successful execution to enhance support efficiency.

• Provide clear, proactive communication regarding system downtimes, maintenance schedules, and IT updates, ensuring all stakeholders are informed through multiple methods, including Status Page, email, and Microsoft Teams.

• Oversee comprehensive asset management, including procurement, inventory, lifecycle management, and cost optimization, ensuring strategic alignment with the studio’s gaming hardware needs and budget considerations.

• Lead and resolve complex technical projects and issues as the internal escalation point, driving collaboration across teams to resolve high-impact challenges, managing project timelines and deliverables, and delivering strategic updates to senior leadership.

• Oversee lab support, ensuring setup, troubleshooting, preventative maintenance, security vulnerability remediations, and escalations for servers, user machines, and gaming hardware.

• Serve as the IT Support Product Owner, leading Scrum processes, identifying and prioritizing impactful projects, driving the successful execution of goals, managing risks, and providing regular communication to senior leadership and studio teams.

• Oversee the onboarding and offboarding processes, ensuring accurate role-based access provisioning, efficient hardware setup, and issue resolution for new hires, as well as secure and efficient offboarding for departing employees.

• Drive the creation and maintenance of comprehensive technical documentation and knowledge base articles, fostering a culture of continuous learning, and providing ongoing training and development within the team.

• Demonstrate agility and responsibility by participating in on-call rotations, owning critical issues,communicating effectively to diverse stakeholders, and ensuring rapid resolution and knowledge transfer with an emphasis on learning and improvement.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• 4+ years experience in information technology (IT) operations, technical support, customer service solutions/delivery, or service management

• OR equivalent experience.

• 2+ years of people management experience, leading technical teams or 2+ years of technical project management or incident management leadershipexperience.

• 3+ years of experiencein guiding internal or external teams in ensuring accountability, adherence to SLAs and KPIs, and alignment with contractual or organizational standardsto deliver consistent, high-quality support services.

• 4+ years of Demonstrable, in-depth understanding of end-user gaming computing hardware, including industry trends, performance characteristics of various components, display technologies, peripherals, and current Windows OS environments. Able to recommend and provideoptimal hardware solutions and configurations that meet the specific performance, quality, and scalability needs of a modern game development studio at minimum across GPUs, CPUs, motherboards, and peripherals.

Additional or preferred qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in information technology (IT), Computer Science, or related field (e.g., Electrical Engineering) AND 4+ years work or internship experience in IT operations, technical support, customer service solutions/delivery, or service management OR equivalent experience.

• Familiarity with project management practices, tools, and methodologies (e.g., experience with SCRUM project management methodology, TFS, DevOps, JIRA or similar)

• Experience with managing workstation infrastructure, datacenter infrastructure, or Azure environments.

• Proven ability to manage project deliverables and track progress with multiple teams across the business.

• Communication & Stakeh old er Management: written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to present complex information clearly to non-technical audiences and senior leadership.

• Prior Ex perience in Game Development Studios: Previous involvement in a game development studio environment, understanding its unique demands, workflows, and hardware/software needs.

Corporate Technology Support IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $94,600 - $183,800 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $122,000 - $200,500 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

Microsoft will accept applications for the role until February 6, 2025.

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Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .