At EA, we thrive on outrageous thinking. It’s the fuel that inspires the best games in the world. We’re innovators and great storytellers. But it’s not just about amazing your peers – it’s about amazing yourself. Take risks. Collaborate with brilliant minds and dare to dream big. Together, we can change the way millions play every day.

Seeking a Technical Director for Maxis Studios.

Goals

Lead Maxis’ backend/server team
Define & own the backend/server technology strategy for Maxis’ games.
Look ahead for, evaluate and recommend technology choices for building robust, responsive and highly scalable game backend services.
Conscious of server operating costs. Being aware of the cost of running live servers and demonstrable experience minimizing those expenses.
Mentor technical leads on the backend design principles.

Develop responsive, massively scalable, highly available game servers and services supporting multiple games.
Creatively blend security best practices and original techniques to keep user data secure and prevent cheating.
Apply and improve server deployment and troubleshooting strategies that maximize uptime.
Drive design and implementation of APIs and protocols that are consistent, formalized, and testable.
Own the “big picture” and work with team members (designers, QE, client engineers & production teams) to align service goals & architecture to meet evolving requirements of games in Live Service.
Mentor other developers, review their work, and make recommendations for improvement.

Preferred Skills

A passion for playing and/or making awesome games!
A strong desire to create scalable game servers and services using modern technology for diverse games.
Hands-on experience building large scale live services for at least one game.
Highly motivated self-starter; capable of operating with autonomy.
A respect for skilled hackers and a healthy level of paranoia to motivate a security-centric approach.
Understanding of stable change management practices in a live service environment.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Experience with technical leadership & mentoring a team of multi-disciplinary (full stack) engineers.
Expert level programming skills – preference for experienced Java developers, but other languages are welcome too.
Experience with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and/or Google App Engine.
Hands on experience and willingness to create multiple short lived prototypes.

Broad experience with some of the following:

Frameworks (e.g. Spring boot)
Build tools (e.g, Gradle, SBT, Maven)
Static analysis tools (e.g., Coverity, Sonar, PMD)
Test frameworks (e.g., JUnit, TestNG, Spring)
Linux scripting (e.g., Bash, Python, Groovy)
Social APIs / 3rd Party SDK Integration
Redis / Memcached data caching solutions
Kotlin / JVM based languages
Familiarity with Linux Systems Administration and/or scripting experience.
Experience shipping games built with Unreal or Unity is good to have.