ASO & Partnerships Director

We are looking for an ASO & Partnerships leader to drive organic growth and deepen platform relationships for Merge Dragons, Monster Legends, Dragon City, FarmVille titles and many more. This role owns the studio's app store optimization strategy end-to-end and serves as our primary relationship holder with the major app store platforms — Google Play, the Apple App Store, Microsoft Store and Amazon Appstore. You will lead a team responsible for improving organic visibility, store conversion, and featuring, while working closely with Product, Creative, UA, and Data teams to unlock sustainable organic growth and strengthen the top of the funnel. You will mentor and empower the ASO team to deliver best-in-class execution, and you'll be the studio's trusted voice in front of our platform partners. Responsibilities Strategic Leadership - Own the end-to-end ASO strategy for the portfolio, driving organic installs, store conversion, and keyword/category rankings across all markets. - Define and manage the yearly organic growth roadmap, including localization, seasonal, and launch strategies. - Set the studio's platform partnership strategy, aligning featuring and promotional opportunities with business priorities and release calendars. Platform Partnerships - Build and maintain strategic relationships with Google Play, Apple App Store, Microsoft Store, and Amazon Appstore partner teams. - Secure featuring, editorial placements, and promotional opportunities across launches, updates, and key seasonal moments. - Advocate for early access to platform betas, new store features, monetization tools, and APIs, and channel those opportunities back to Product and UA. - Represent the studio in partner reviews, QBRs, and industry events, and negotiate co-marketing and joint business plans. Performance Optimization - Lead store listing experimentation (Custom Product Pages, Product Page Optimization, Google Play store listing experiments) to improve conversion rate. - Own keyword and metadata optimization, and build rigorous test roadmaps across icons, screenshots, preview videos, and descriptions. - Establish measurement frameworks to attribute organic uplift and quantify the impact of ASO and featuring initiatives. Team & Collaboration - Mentor ASO managers, specialists, and analysts; build structured career growth and execution excellence. - Partner closely with Creative teams to fuel store asset testing velocity and creative breakthroughs. - Collaborate with UA, Product, and Data teams to ensure cohesive full-funnel optimization and visibility improvements. Operational Excellence - Establish clear accountability for results with transparent reporting and actionable insights. - Improve execution speed through better process, prioritization, and cross-team alignment. Qualifications - 6–10+ years of ASO or mobile organic growth experience in free-to-play, ideally in gaming. - Proven track record of improving organic installs and store conversion at scale across multiple markets. - Established working relationships with platform partner teams (Apple, Google, and ideally Microsoft and/or Amazon). - Strong fluency in ASO tools (e.g. AppTweak, Sensor Tower, data.ai) and store listing A/B testing methodologies. - Deep understanding of app store algorithms, ranking factors, and each platform's merchandising ecosystem. - Experience leading and developing high-performing teams. - Ability to influence stakeholders and drive alignment across multiple functions. - Bonus: familiarity with Match-3/puzzle models and hybrid-casual or builder games.