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Development Director

Development Director - Maxis

Location: Redwood City, CA / Open to remote work out of most US States

At Maxis, we excel at outrageous thinking. It’s the fuel that inspires the best games in the world. We’re trailblazers and great storytellers. But it’s not just about amazing your peers – it’s about amazing yourself and our fans. Take risks. Work with dazzling minds and dare to dream big. Together, we can change the way millions play every day. The Sims 4 has an extremely unique player base, with 60% of our audience being women between the ages of 18-24. We are looking for someone with deep insights on how to create the best experience for our players.

You will report into a studio Senior Development Director.

Responsibilities:

A Development Director manages a variety of disciplines including artists, designers, software engineers, QA and other production staff. DD's are the keepers of the project schedule and help move the development team from one project phase to the next while ensuring a strong focus on quality , collaboration and communication. You will report into one of our Senior Development Directors and partner with producers (our product owners) to ensure that they are managing the project on time, to quality, and within budget.

Leadership

• Build and evolve team; identify resourcing needs, provides challenges and developmental opportunities to ensure that all employees reach their potential.
• Build and maintain working relationships with immediate team and those outside of the immediate team that have an effect on the completion of the project
• Provide line management to employees across disciplines within a single project team
• Communicate with project team and coordinate dependencies with external partners

Execution

• Establish and assign task goals from defined project goals; achieve project deliverables through managing team at a project-level and domain/game area level
• Proactively assess and mitigate risk for assigned scope and work with product owners and tech leads to resolve problems that come up
• Partnering with production to manage scope and quality
• You take ownership and see projects through despite obstacles and difficult circumstances, demonstrating a sense of dependability and commitment

Project management

• Establish an overall project schedule based on the individual task estimates for production
• Determine the resource requirements to meet the task requirements
• Establish a project budget, determine task dependencies, and assign tasks to team resources as appropriate
• Run stand-ups and sprint planning meetings
• Track work progress and report status back to product owners at a regular cadence

Creative Quality

• Prioritizing and resolving issues through creative problem solving skills
• Recognize and balance priorities of eliminating the root causes of problems

Qualifications:

• 8 years project management or team leadership experience
• Education requirement University degree Bachelors or equivalent professional experience
• Experience in various project management methodologies such as Waterfall and Agile
• Familiarity with JIRA