Manager, Business Operations

Business Operations (“Biz Ops”) is a function within the Strategy & Operations org at SPE that plays a critical role in driving the company’s growth and achieving its strategic ambitions. The team is responsible for identifying and evaluating transformative opportunities, ensuring they align with SPE’s unique capabilities, and partnering across the organization and with external stakeholders to bring these ideas to life. With a mandate to expand SPE’s impact, Biz Ops combines strategic thinking with practical execution, serving as a key advisor to executive leadership.

As an engine for growth, Biz Ops influences the company’s strategic direction, helps put the right resources and systems in place, and shapes opportunities that leverage SPE’s differentiated assets to create innovative partnerships for artists, brands, and platforms. The work requires a dynamic, entrepreneurial mindset — comfortable operating with incomplete information – and the ability to manage cross-functional initiatives by maintaining clear, consistent communication. Team members must be able to balance big picture vision with hands-on execution to maintain focus and ensure well-informed decision-making.

This role will report to the VP, Business Operations.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Strategic Planning and Execution: Partner with senior Biz Ops execs to identify strategic opportunities, build business cases for new growth opportunities and outline execution plans across SPE’s core businesses (Motion Picture, SPT, SPNI, Crunchyroll, and Alamo Drafthouse/Experiences), ensuring alignment with the company's overall vision and objectives.
  • Identify opportunities for growth based on an understanding of the industry, our peers, and SPE strategic initiatives. Conduct research and provide recommendations.
  • Collaborate with members of company and divisional leadership to evaluate existing plans (and performance) in comparison to opportunities in the marketplace.
  • Build detailed execution plans for new projects, leveraging project management skillsets to ensure that teams collaborate appropriately, that deliverables are tracked and that tangible outcomes are measured.

• Project Lead & Design: Drive projects from divisional and executive leadership, supporting Sony, SPE and divisional goals.
  • Support evaluation and implementation of sourcing, deal-making, financing, development, production/execution, and monetization strategies that align to the company’s existing capabilities and resources or make the case for adding new ones.
  • Build robust financial and business cases/plans for new initiatives, including revenue projections, cost analysis, and risk assessments.
  • Collaborate with key creative, business, operating, and financial stakeholders to determine key risks and opportunities related to the overall effort and execution of it.

• Market Analysis and Opportunity Identification: Conduct in-depth market assessments to identify growth opportunities, competitive dynamics, and emerging trends in the media and entertainment industry.
  • Promote a culture of critical thinking and curiosity through pursuit (and collection) of key market intelligence and performance data.
  • Leverage this information and perspective across all SPE businesses to analyze audience behavior, content consumption patterns, and technological advancements to inform decision-making.

• Development of Leadership Skills & Executive Presence: Build skill-set as a creative thinker, operational leader and driver of collaboration within the organization and broader industry.
  • Continue to improve communication skills, becoming comfortable leading initiatives, managing senior stakeholders and supporting complex collaboration models.
  • Build a strong network internally at SPE, while building a broad knowledge of the industry.

• Operational Excellence: Foster a culture of collaboration and coordination across the company by demonstrating intentionality, innovation, and information sharing.
  • Take time to learn how our businesses work, including first and second order influences.
  • Push for continuous improvement modeling behaviors that promote a culture of accountability including humility, vulnerability, and rigor.
  • Work with corporate and business teams to streamline operational processes without oversimplifying or implying uniformity of creative, teams, processes, or outcomes.

• Stakeholder Communication: Outline, draft, revise, and deliver material communications to the team, executive leadership, corporate and operating colleagues, and external stakeholders.
  • Communicate progress, challenges, and opportunities effectively to ensure alignment and support across the organization.

Qualifications

Biz Ops has a “C.H.E.C.K. Yourself” philosophy, necessary to building trust with colleagues and peers, subject matter expertise, and critical thinking skills:

CURIOUS: Desire to learn – both about specific topics and how to grow as a professional. Willingness to ask questions and to question one’s own thinking/experiences. Team members approach challenges and opportunities with an open mind about how to tackle them, not with the conclusions already in hand.

HUMBLE: One’s knowledge relative to others is tiny relative to all available knowledge. Recognition that outcomes are some combination of skill, circumstances, and luck – not always in the same proportion.

EMPATHETIC: Working effectively with others requires an understanding of where they see themselves relative to others, including you. Priorities, planning, and actions are informed by incentives, context, and individual experience – they operate in a feedback loop that is unlikely to be effectively altered by evaluating outcomes without understanding process.

CONFIDENT: Trust in one’s intentions and abilities should affirm contributions to a project. Skills can always be honed, and expertise can gained, but only with the self-assurance that participation is warranted. It takes just as much confidence to ask a question admitting a lack of knowledge as it does to make an informed declaration. Arrogance is confidence without humility and curiosity.

KNOWLEDGEABLE: Expertise, information, and insight are valuable inputs to informed decision-making. Critical judgments should be made with the benefit of both evidence and perspective, which is separated from opinion by the pattern recognition developed through experience and reflection.

EXPERIENCE & SKILLS:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Economics, Finance, Engineering, or a related field; MBA or advanced degree, media experience and/or consulting experience preferred.
• 3+ years of experience with an MBA or 5+ years of experience with a Bachelor’s degree in strategy/Corp Dev, strategic planning, business operations, operations, or a similar role within the media and entertainment industry.
• Proven track record of identifying and developing successful business strategies that drive growth and profitability.
• Experience in communicating with executive teams, executing projects for senior leadership and managing a varied set of stakeholders.
• Experience translating strategic plans into actionable initiatives.
• Exceptional analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
• Demonstrated history of intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to translate complex strategic, financial, and operational information into clear, compelling communications
• Able to translate complicated financial, contractual, strategic, or operational minutiae into relevant, digestible outputs.
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and manage multiple priorities simultaneously.
• Deep understanding of the media and entertainment industry and its various business lines.

Sony Pictures Entertainment is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, veteran status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other protected characteristics.

SPE will consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records in accordance with applicable law.

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