Senior Director, International Communications

Team Name:

Public Relations

Job Title:

Senior Director, International Communications

Requisition ID:

R028259

Job Description:

REPORTS TO:  Vice President, Blizzard Communications

LOCATION: Irvine, CA (Hybrid)

YOUR MISSION

The Senior Director of International Communications for Blizzard will lead franchise, brand, and reputation communications across international markets (EMEA, LATAM, APAC), acting as the senior strategic leader for the international communications organization and the connective tissue between global strategy and regional execution. This role shapes how players, creators, and media around the world experience and talk about Blizzard's franchises throughout the year, translating global narratives into cohesive market plans, campaigns, and moments that land with cultural credibility in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and beyond. 

Operating with autonomy as the international communications lead for Blizzard, the Senior Director sets direction across launches, live service momentum, franchise storytelling, and community engagement, while driving operational excellence and cross functional alignment at scale. A defining part of the role is judgment: evaluating where the highest impact communications opportunities sit across a broad portfolio of markets and moments, choosing what to invest in, knowing what to leave on the table and driving clarity and alignment on the approach. This role is a key connector across global comms, international marketing and publishing, development teams, legal, and customer support, and a trusted voice in the most visible and most sensitive moments for the business internationally. 

This is a people leadership role first. You will lead, coach, and grow a distributed team of regional communications leaders across time zones and cultures, setting a clear vision, raising the creative bar, and creating the conditions for seasoned operators to do the best work of their careers. We are looking for someone thoughtful and strategic, with the creative instinct to imagine communications work no one has seen before and the discipline to make it real across many markets at once. 

While your role is specifically focused on Blizzard communications, it sits within the XBOX Communications team, the team responsible for championing player first storytelling and innovative communications that serve passionate players globally. You will work closely with peers across the business, sharing best practices, insights, and approaches that strengthen communications across markets and across our broad set of games. 

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own the international communications strategy for Blizzard franchises, brand, and reputation, ensuring player first, culturally relevant storytelling that is aligned to global strategy and business priorities in every region. 
• Lead, develop, and grow a distributed team of regional communications leaders, setting clear goals and expectations, coaching for craft and judgment, and building a bench of future-ready leaders. 
• Evaluate and prioritize the highest impact communications opportunities across markets, moments, and franchises, making clear recommendations about where to invest and where to decline. 
• Provide strategic leadership across launches, live operations, seasonal beats, and ongoing franchise momentum, balancing long lead planning with the short lead opportunities that define a live service business. 
• Lead the development and delivery of international PR campaigns, creative storytelling platforms, and media, creator, and talent moments and events that elevate company and franchise narratives. 
• Shape and steward messaging frameworks and narratives, including press materials, Q and As, talking points, and briefing documents for spokespeople and partners in market. 
• Build and maintain senior level relationships with priority international gaming, tech, mainstream, culture and lifestyle media, and with the influencers and creators who shape how our games are understood, acting as a trusted point of contact for the business. 
• Set the international creator and earned media strategy for prioritized franchises, defining clear objectives, audience opportunities, KPIs, and measurement frameworks that regional teams can execute against. 
• Serve as an embedded communications partner to regional marketing and publishing, development teams, legal, and customer support, influencing plans, timing, and execution rather than reacting to them.  
• Protect and strengthen brand reputation internationally, leading issues management with sound judgment, identifying risk early, developing recommendations, and partnering closely with global and regional stakeholders. 
• Partner with agencies across regions with clear direction and accountability, ensuring high quality delivery, strong judgment, and measurable results against goals. 
• Drive measurement, reporting, and insights, using performance data and learnings to inform optimization, investment decisions, and future planning across markets. 
• Manage international communications budget, including forecasting, spend tracking, headcount planning, and resource prioritization. 
• Represent international communications with confidence and clarity in senior leadership, regional, and cross functional forums, and bring the voice of players in market back into global planning. 
• Partner strategically with marketing and the business on emerging markets approach.

PLAYER PROFILE

Minimum Requirements 

• Extensive experience in communications, public relations, creator relations, or a closely related field, including significant time leading communications across multiple international markets. 12+ years in communications or public relations, including 5+ years leading and developing teams, and significant experience across international markets.   
• Willingness to work out of Blizzard HQ in Irvine, California. 3 days a week in office.  
• Proven people leadership experience, including managing managers or senior individual contributors across regions, with a track record of hiring, developing, and retaining strong communicators. 
• Demonstrated success building and executing brand, franchise, or product communications strategies in markets such as Europe, Asia, and Latin America, with an understanding of how one narrative has to flex by culture and media landscape. 
• Deep media, creator, and influencer relationships, and the credibility to counsel senior spokespeople and prepare them for high visibility moments. 
• Experience leading issues and crisis communications for a consumer brand, with the judgment to know what to escalate, what to answer, and what to let pass. 
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including editing, message development, and the ability to turn complex information into a story people want to read. 
• Strong strategic thinking paired with operational rigor, comfortable owning budgets, agency rosters, planning calendars, and measurement. 
• Ability to work across a large, matrixed organization and to build trust quickly with partners in other functions and other time zones. 
• Willingness to travel internationally and to work across time zones with regional teams and partners. 

Extra Points 

• Experience in games, entertainment, or another fandom driven business, and genuine curiosity about how player communities work. 
• Familiarity with Blizzard franchises and the communities around them. 
• Experience communicating around live service titles, seasonal content, and long running franchises. 
• Fluency in a second language relevant to a priority international market. 
• Experience standing up new communications capabilities, teams, or ways of working in a market. 

OUR WORLD

At Blizzard Entertainment, we pour our hearts and souls into everything we create. Best known for iconic video game universes including Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo, and StarCraft, we’ve been creating genre-defining games for millions of players around the world for more than 30 years. We’re on a quest: bring our dreams to life and craft the most epic entertainment experiences…ever. Hard work, iteration and polish go into the Blizzard “secret recipe,” but the most important ingredients come from talented people who share our vision. If that sounds like you, join us.

The videogame industry and therefore our business is fast-paced and will continue to evolve. As such, the duties and responsibilities of this role may be changed as directed by the Company at any time to promote and support our business and relationships with industry partners.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status, among other characteristics.

Rewards

We provide a suite of benefits that promote physical, emotional and financial well-being for ‘Every World’ - we’ve got our employees covered!  Subject to eligibility requirements, the Company offers comprehensive benefits including:

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance;
• 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching;
• Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave;
• Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others;
• If the Company requires that you move geographic locations for the job, then you may also be eligible for relocation assistance.

Eligibility to participate in these benefits may vary for part time and temporary full-time employees and interns with the Company.  You can learn more by visiting https://www.benefitsforeveryworld.com/.

In the U.S., the standard base pay range for this role is $151,420.00 - $280,134.00 Annual. These values reflect the expected base pay range of new hires across all U.S. locations. Ultimately, your specific range and offer will be based on several factors, including relevant experience, performance, and work location. Your Talent Professional can share this role’s range details for your local geography during the hiring process. In addition to a competitive base pay, employees in this role may be eligible for incentive compensation. Incentive compensation is not guaranteed. While we strive to provide competitive offers to successful candidates, new hire compensation is negotiable.

Extensive experience (12+ years) in communications/public relations, with 5+ years leading and developing international teams across multiple markets (EMEA, LATAM, APAC). Proven success in building and executing brand/franchise communication strategies, strong media/creator relationships, and experience in issues/crisis management for a consumer brand. Exceptional written/verbal communication skills, strategic thinking, operational rigor, and ability to work across a matrixed organization. Willingness to work 3 days a week in Irvine, CA, and travel internationally.