Studio Head

About XSQUADS

XSQUADS is an Indian mobile game studio building ScarFall 2.0, a made-in-India mobile battle royale shooter. Our focus is gameplay quality, strong live operations, and scalable production for a large player base.

About the role

The Studio Head is the single operating owner of the studio. You decide what we build and why — using analytics, player feedback, and studio-level targets agreed with the CEO — and you run the studio day-to-day. Production, live operations, marketing, community, analytics, people/HR, and game design all report to you.

This is a general-management seat with product as its core discipline, reporting directly to the CEO. Scope boundary: the CEO holds final approval on major pricing/economy changes, leadership hires, publisher contract matters, and ship-or-delay calls on major releases — everything else is yours to decide and own.

What you will own

• Product direction: one prioritised backlog, clear feature specs, and a measurable target for every major initiative.
• Studio day-to-day: directing the Producer on priority and trade-offs, and running the leadership layer beneath you.
• The numbers: D1/D7/D30 retention, ARPDAU, paying-player percentage, and economy health — reported weekly against targets, with honest analysis when a number misses.
• Economy go/no-go decisions, escalating major pricing and currency changes for CEO sign-off.
• Marketing, community, and live-operations health through the leads who run those functions.
• Hiring within approved headcount across your organisation, and the quality of the leadership bench under you.
• The monthly studio-health summary and the weekly KPI review with the CEO.

Must-haves

• 8+ years in games or consumer tech, including at least 3 years owning a product outcome or P&L end-to-end — not supporting one, owning one.
• Has managed managers: direct experience running a multi-discipline team (product plus at least two of production, marketing, analytics, or operations).
• Deep working fluency with free-to-play metrics: retention curves, ARPDAU, conversion, LTV, and live-game economy dynamics.
• A track record of decisions made under ambiguity with incomplete data — and the ability to walk us through two of them, including one that went wrong.
• Comfortable being the single point of accountability: when a number misses, you explain it and fix it; you do not route blame downward.
• Strong written communication: this role runs on short, sharp specs and weekly reports, not long meetings.

Nice-to-haves

• Mobile free-to-play live-service experience in the Indian market specifically.
• Experience working with an external publisher relationship.
• Prior founder, GM, or studio-head experience at a 50–200 person company.

How we work

On-site in Surat, Gujarat. Meetings run in a natural mix of Gujarati, Hindi, and English; all documents and tracking are written in English. We run a single clear chain of command, short weekly reviews, and honest weekly reporting of real numbers against targets.

How to apply

Send your resume together with a brief note describing one project you owned end-to-end, the biggest delivery challenge you faced, and how you resolved it.