Black Forest Games is part of the fastest growing publisher in Europe, Embracer Group, and the biggest studio of THQ Nordic Vienna. Our last release was the highly successful remake of ‘Destroy All Humans!’.
Here in the south of Germany, directly at the French border, we combine the creative freedom and culture of an independent studio with the financial security of a big publisher.
We are an international team and we foster diversity. Sharing this mindset is a must for us. We are happy for every candidate who contributes to the diversity of our team.
Technical Director (f/m/d)
We are looking for an experienced tech-lead to join our team. The person in this position will be responsible for organizing and overseeing our team of currently 15 talented programmers (growing) in our current and future projects. They should have the ability to shape a technical vision and work with the programmers to turn it into reality. They should also be as good of a programmer as a communicator, have superior management skills and a very solid coding background. The technical director will directly help to define the course of development during all its stages.
Responsibilities:
- Guiding and overseeing our programmers as well as mentoring them
- Coordinating tasks and creating guidelines, including expansive documentation
- Establishing quality benchmarks and demonstrating knowledge
- Remain hands-on with the code
- Playing an active part in the recruitment of new candidates
- Responsible for tools that go along with features; ensure they are useable and appropriate for artists, games, and the engine
- Be forward thinking – able to keep up-to-date on current techniques, research, graphics data, hardware, etc. and integrate them into development
Reporting Lines:
- You will directly report to our Executive Technical Director
- Three team leads directly reporting to you
Requirements:
- Exceptional C++ programming skills and experience with multi-threaded programming techniques
- At least two PS4/Xbox One/WiiU/PS3/X360 games shipped, at least one while being involved during the entire development cycle
- Passion for mathematics and complex algorithms
- Good understanding and practical experience of optimization
- Experience managing and leading a team of programmers with various experience levels
- Outstanding verbal and written interpersonal communication skills
- Fluent English
Not required, but a huge plus:
- Additional management qualifications
- Extensive SPU and threading experience
- Substantial DX11, DX12, GNM or Vulkan experience
- Familiarity with a wide range of graphical rendering techniques
- Experience working on all aspects for gameplay programming
- Console experience on multiple major platforms
- Extensive optimization experience with Razor, GPAD, PIX and Spark (and any other relevant profilers)
- Unreal 4 experience
Assessment:
- CV, personal references
- Video interview
- On-site studio visit
What else do we offer?
- Flexible working hours
- 28 days of holiday
- Competitive salary
- Green office
- Stability of a successful publisher paired with creative freedom of an independent studio
and the chance to work with a great team in an open culture where your opinion and input is welcome and considered, beyond your dedicated task.
Why join Black Forest Games?
We are a team with a long history of looking for long-term companions – we are hiring for the studio, not for the project. This is an important part of our company philosophy. Talent is always welcome no matter where you are from. We offer a family-friendly work-life balance and a lot of flexibility.
Here you can work on IPs known worldwide and have a hand in shaping them.
As a bonus, Black Forest Games is located in one of the most beautiful and wealthiest areas in the South of Germany, located closely to Strasbourg, Karlsruhe and Basel. Getting here is easy, because of excellent traffic conditions – 3 airports about 30 minutes away, the Autobahn and the ICE station right around the corner. All of this in a region where kids still play in the nature and drive to school by bike.
You love everything about us, but you don’t want to live in Germany? No problem, lots of our developers are living cross the border in Strasbourg, France and get here easily by train or car. Strasbourg is one of the biggest cities in France with 500.000 citizens.