This job listing expired on Jul 21, 2022
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A Development Director/Manager should be passionate about both process and gaming to provide daily production leadership to the team(s). Development Directors/Managers manage project and feature planning, balance scope with capacity, manage resource allocation, track progress, implement processes and manage risks and mitigation. Specifically:

  • They understand the iterative nature of creative processes and how to organize them.
  • They know how to build healthy, high functioning relationships with vendors.
  • They are a force multiplier for the team and understand how to empower them.
  • They are masters of work systems - feature & content pipelines.

Development Director:

  • Help shape the Firaxis Studio with Senior Leadership, driving new asynchronous initiatives and changing the landscape of what remote development is for the industry.
  • Visualize resource capacity for complex projects/teams. Forecast future needs and collaborate with team leadership to grow skill sets or build business justifications for additional resources
  • Be the point of escalation for conflict management within project teams, help to remove roadblocks or escalate issues to team leadership for resolution before they become impactful.
  • Lead development managers at all levels of the organization to provide feedback and mentorship, ensuring compliance with established processes.
  • Establish and maintain change management processes for existing games/services to ensure that releases and issues are triaged and resolved.
  • Identify and implement process improvement programs across full projects or multiple teams.
  • Approve plans and schedules, drive status reports across multiple complex projects/teams.
  • Anticipate and solve dependencies between the project and external groups.
  • Create a framework for Live Service Operation within the Firaxis organization while establishing and maintaining team health standards.
  • Use change management processes to communicate and measure the effectiveness of project-wide change.

Development Manager:

  • Communicate product goals to all team members and align execution to those goals.
  • Manage planning in all development stages from pre-production, production, launch, and live.
  • Apply project management frameworks such as Agile and Waterfall, as appropriate for a given project/game/team.
  • Employ needed tools for tracking and communicating project status, including Shotgun, Jira, PowerBI, Word, Excel (can maintain and create complex spreadsheets), PowerPoint, Perforce, etc.
  • Drive and document team processes for scope and capacity management across disciplines and teams, evaluating and evolving as necessary to support innovation and improvement.
  • Create scenarios and guide the decision-making process.
  • Guide teams to achieve our milestones on time and at quality.
  • Identify and communicate delivery risks and mitigation plans.
  • Maintain an environment that encourages creativity and collaboration.
  • Manage communication with project leaders

Qualifications: 

  • Experience managing teams, distributed across multiple different time zones.
  • Experience operating in a live service/ops environment.
  • Experience managing cross-discipline teams and working with vendors and outsourcers.
  • Ability to mediate and drive conflict resolution.
  • Adept at managing across all levels of an organization.
  • Understand the status of your project and can visualize that status for any audience.
  • Understand the complexities and requirements of production and how to manage them.

CORE VALUES

GAMEPLAY FIRST

  • Let gameplay drive decision making

BE ACCOUNTABLE

  • Deliver great work for the studio, the team & yourself

PEOPLE FOCUSED

  • Maintain an environment where people are happy

EMBRACE ENTHUSIASM

  • Find opportunities to contribute and collaborate

WORK SMART

  • Put effort where it pays off the most

STUDIO LEGACY:

Named World’s #1 Developer of the Year by Game Informer Magazine in 2012, Firaxis is very proud of its legacy of developing award winning titles. We have won multiple BAFTAs, D.I.C.E Awards, Game of the Year titles, and category awards (from “Best Strategy Game” to “Best PC Game”) across our products.

Additionally, our company was also featured in SmartCEO’s “Best-Run Book” for company culture and praised for a focus on “family, fun and flexibility.” Firaxis was also named a finalist in SmartCEO’s Healthiest Company Awards for 2016.

Firaxis Games prides itself on maintaining a quality of life inside and outside the studio – when our team members are happy and healthy, creativity can flourish. We offer boot camp fitness and yoga classes at the office, a free gym with shower, regularly catered lunches and breakfasts, biweekly Friday Happy Hours, company events and parties, and a “FunZone” complete with billiards, foosball, video games, and tabletop gaming space. We are also a philanthropic studio and offer employees the chance to volunteer with local charities and nonprofits throughout the year.

Fulltime employees can also take advantage of Medical, Dental, and Vision coverage, 401K retirement savings, a wellbeing initiative with the opportunity to earn cash rewards, an Employee Assistance Program, and paid time off and paid holidays.