Development Director - USA
Company unspecified (job is advertised through an agency)Development Director
The Development Director (DD) is responsible for ensuring the successful delivery of a game, on time and within budget. The DD is responsible for determining and carrying out a detailed analysis of the game design and working out the project 'milestones' (specific targets that have to be met by certain dates). They will also develop a schedule for the project and will monitor the team's progress against the schedule and budget.
Role Overview:
•Manage the cost allocation at the project level to achieve deliverables on time; contribute at the business unit (multiple teams) level with awareness of priorities, bringing predictability and accountability to the group.
•With the Production staff, drive motivated project teams to achieve defined vision and product objectives while balancing priorities through collaboration with studio leaders.
•Responsible for implementing and enforcing the usage of software tools used to capture time, costs, and project statuses.
Execution:
•Creative problem solving, long term planning, resource allocation and sourcing, development of new project management processes and systems.
•Able to foresee problems; prioritizes when and what issues to solve and applies creative problem solving skills; develops creative solutions to reduce root causes of problems so they do not reappear.
•Work closely with the Studio resources to ensure that all game requirements are understood and appropriately scheduled.
•Communicate regularly and effectively the progress of the studio to all interested Stakeholders.
•Partners efficiently with internal (Finance, IT, HR, QA, ) and external services to ensure the functioning of the development studio.
Business Management:
•Prepare budgets, cost benefit analyses and assist in preparing game proposals; Understand income statement and what impacts it; help ensure projects meet financial objectives
•Effective at identifying opportunities to share and reuse between partners; identify new partners to help reduce costs including outsourcing, QA, art, Localization
Creative Quality:
•Make recommendations around the balance between quality, time and cost; assist producer in directing the team accordingly.
•Make the right choices by understanding the business impact of quality; knows on time, recognizing that on budget is meaningless if the product quality is not achieved.
Key Skills:
•Strong communicator, mediation and conflict resolution skills.
•Ability to think outside the box in a challenging and ambiguous environment.
•Able to initiate or implement development process improvements to achieve efficiencies and to act as a change agent for process improvements.
Experience Required:
•Minimum 6 years project management experience or other related experience.
•In depth experience of senior operations and development roles within the games, software and/or online services industry
•Extensive experience managing cradle-to-grave software projects with proven leadership and hands-on management skills. Shipped 2 or 3 video games is a plus.
•Degree in Computer Science or equivalent


