Live events director

About You

You are the person who makes ambitious live events come to life. You came up through live production environments, so you know what a great show looks and feels like. You understand how creative, content, broadcast, competition, hospitality, and audience experience all need to work together. Somewhere along the way, you discovered that you are just as good at seeing the whole picture, setting the direction, and getting everyone moving toward the same outcome.

You have strong creative instincts and know how to turn a big idea into something real. You can protect what makes an idea special while still making it deliverable. You know when to push for something better, when to simplify, and when someone just needs to make the call.

You are relentlessly accountable. You are comfortable holding the master schedule, guiding, supporting and keeping those helping to drive deliverables on track. When a venue changes the load in window, a partner needs 57 chess sets in a city you have never worked in, and broadcast wants to move the stage two meters, you solve the problems without losing sight of why the event exists in the first place.

You care about the people in the room: the players, fans, creators, partners, guests, and crew. You believe a live event is judged by the experience people had, not by whether the original plan survived.

You are equally comfortable developing a three year strategy and walking a venue the night before doors open. You have high standards, good judgment, a low ego, and the ability to stay calm when the plan changes.

About the Role

Chess.com has created some of the most watched events in chess, including the Speed Chess Championship, the Champions Chess Tour, and PogChamps. We are now building a broader portfolio of live experiences that includes flagship competitions, fan events, theatrical premieres, partner activations, publishing moments, and our global company meetup.

We are looking for someone to bring those experiences together and help define what Chess.com live events can become. This is a senior individual contributor role to start. You will be our live events leader and our live events doer, setting the strategy while personally leading delivery, with strong experience creating cross functional alignment within a heavily matrix organization. As our live event portfolio grows, this role may also have the opportunity to build and lead an internal team.

What You Will Do

• Set our live events strategy. Build a clear long-term vision for our live event portfolio and define how events can drive audience growth, community, brand, content, partnerships, and revenue.
• Own the portfolio. Create an annual roadmap across competitive events, fan experiences, company gatherings, premieres, partner activations, and new event concepts. Help us make smart decisions about where to invest, what to grow, and what not to do.
• Lead our biggest events. Serve as the accountable event lead for experiences such as the Speed Chess Championship Finals. Bring creative, competition, broadcast, content, hospitality, and operations together into one plan.
• Turn creative ambition into reality. Partner with our creative and content leaders to shape great event concepts, then build the budgets, schedules, teams, and production plans needed to deliver them.
• Own the integration layer. Build and hold the master event plan and physical run of show. Coordinate how spaces are used, how programming and activations fit together, and how content opportunities are captured. Make sure every internal team and external partner is working from the same plan.
• Own venues and production partners. Source, evaluate, negotiate, and manage venues, hotels, agencies, fabricators, and production vendors. Build a trusted global network so we are not starting from zero every time we enter a new city.
• Own the budget. Build and manage event budgets, track spending, oversee reconciliation, and manage the financial and contractual lifecycle of each event alongside our Finance and Legal teams. Bring a clear point of view on where money creates the most value for our audience.
• Define what success looks like. Help us measure events across attendance, fan experience, content performance, community growth, partner value, revenue, and brand impact. Use those insights to make each event better than the last.
• Support live experiences across Chess.com. Partner with teams across the company on activations of every size, from a film premiere or creator tournament to a fan zone, partner event, or courtside chess set.
• Make the experience great. Set the standard for how players, creators, fans, partners, staff, and crew experience our events. Own hospitality, staffing, communications, and the hundred small details that determine whether an event feels premium or chaotic.
• Build our operating system. Establish the tools, roles, approval processes, budget models, production standards, and post event reviews that allow us to deliver bigger and better experiences with less friction each year.
• Explore what comes next. Help us evaluate new formats, markets, and partnerships, including fan conventions, festivals, touring concepts, and other ways to bring the global chess community together.

What You Bring

• More than 10 years of experience delivering major live events, with a strong foundation in live, experiential, and/or broadcast production.
• Experience serving as the accountable lead for complex events with broadcast, content, or competition at their center.
• The ability to move comfortably between long term strategy, executive communication, and detailed delivery.
• A track record of owning large event budgets, including forecasting, vendor negotiation, contracting, and reconciliation.
• Experience sourcing and operating venues, hotels, and production partners across multiple markets or countries.
• Strong creative judgment and the operational experience to know what is possible, what needs to change, and what is worth fighting for.
• Experience leading teams and external partners without relying on direct reporting authority.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to create alignment in a fully distributed company.
• Calm and decisive leadership when conditions change and information is incomplete.
• A strong sense of ownership and genuine care for the people doing the work.
• Willingness to travel internationally several times each year and work occasional weekends or nontraditional hours when events require it.

Especially Helpful

• Experience in esports, sports, music, entertainment, gaming, or large scale brand experiences.
• Experience with fan conventions, festivals, expos, or other audience focused event formats.
• Experience managing production agencies, fabricators, technical vendors, and local crews.
• Experience building an events function or developing new event concepts from the ground up.
• An understanding of how live events, broadcast, social content, creators, partnerships, and community growth work together.

You do not need to be a strong chess player. You do need to be curious about why hundreds of millions of people love this game and excited about creating new ways for them to experience it together.

About the Opportunity

This is a full time position. This is a senior individual contributor role to start, with the potential to build and manage a team as our live event portfolio grows. You will report to our VP, Media & Content and work closely with our sports Commissioner. We are 100 percent remote and always have been. This position is open to applicants based in the United States. International travel will be required.