Jobs digest: moves at Scopely, Rovio and Socialpoint as Duolingo hires Wild Camp and Side Quest goes public

 

Our jobs digest has all the recruitment news you need from across the mobile games business, all in one spot.

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Scopely: Following five years at Playtika, where he most recently served as head of strategic platforms and partnerships, Nadav Moshes has joined the Monopoly Go maker as director of slate and portfolio strategy.

Former Ticket Out social media manager Eileen Mary O’Connell has also joined the company as social content manager for Monopoly Go. Saurabh Rawat has also been promoted from product manager to senior product manager – monetisation/liveops/core content.

Scopely’s Moshes, O’Connell and Rawat, Rovio’s Smith Dela Pena, Socialpoint’s Castells.

Rovio: Former Gameloft senior UA manager and Mega Studio head of UA Smith Dela Pena has joined the Angry Birds maker as performance marketing lead.

Socialpoint: Following seven years as senior product manager at King, Roger Castells has joined the Dragon City maker in the same role.

Duolingo: The Wild Camp Games team has joined the educational tech company. Studio co-founders Murari Vasudevan and David Christensen have taken on the roles of senior engineering manager and staff product manager respectively at the firm best known for its free language-learning app.

Side Quest Games: This new Barcelona-based studio plans to focus on creating accessible, strategy driven sports games. Its co-founders include Alexandre Besenval, who was previously head of studio at Sandsoft Games, and CTO Oscar Zurriaga Jardi, who was formerly engineering manager at Scopely. The team also includes senior game designer Joaquin Hurtado, who previously held the same role at Ubisoft, and game engineer Ivan Strok, who was previously a developer at Studio Stone.

Duolingo’s Vasudevan and Christensen, Side Quest Games’ Besenval, Hurtado and Strok.

Star Stable Entertainment: The Star Stable maker has appointed James Watkins as interim CEO after Johan Sjoberg stepped down as CEO.

Google: Former SuperData Research VP of business development and product Sam Barberie has joined the tech giant as specialist, AI x gaming, media and entertainment.

Paige Owen has also been hired as a strategic partner development lead for mobile apps. They were most recently senior manager, inventory development at The Trade Desk.

Stillfront: The Swedish roll-up firm’s nomination committee has proposed that Nezahat Gultekin be elected as a new member of the board of directors at its AGM in May. Her former roles include head of advisory at UniCredit and head of technology investment banking EMEA at Nomura.

Star Stable’s Watkins and Sjoberg, Google’s Barberie and Owen, Stillfront’s Gultekin.

AppLovin: The marketing giant’s chief technology officer, Basil Shikin, will transition into the role of distinguished engineer in July, at which time current chief product and engineering officer Giovanni Ge will assume the role of CTO.

The company’s current chief administrative and legal officer, Victoria Valenzuela, will retire in August, and will be nominated for election as a director at its AGM. Corina Cacovean, currently deputy general counsel, privacy, litigation and regulatory, will become AppLovin’s next chief legal officer.

The company has also appointed Craig Billings as independent chairperson of the board. He has served as a member of the board since December 2020, and spent five years as lead independent director.

Playtika: The Israeli developer and publisher has promoted Chen Leshez to the position of SVP corporate development.

Integrated Reality Labs: The mobile games tech startup has announced the appointment of Bruce Hack as chairman. He formerly served as the executive vice chairman of Activision Blizzard, as well as CEO of Vivendi Games.

It has also appointed new board member Sukriti Chadha. She was previously staff product manager at StubHub, product lead at DoorDash, and senior product manager at Spotify and Yahoo Finance.

Voodoo: The French games firm has hired Sergei Maslennikov as creative director. They were previously lead game designer at both Zeptolab and Room 8 Studio.

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