Development Director

Who is MAXIS?

Welcome to Maxis , home to tinkerers, craftspeople, & storytellers. Our drive is to inspire everyone to make a better world through creative play. As the developer of The Sims , we create games and experiences for millions of people around the world and are always looking for new ways to inspire our players. Maxis is a place where you can do what you love and help others grow while doing it; a place where your unique voice can be heard and seen. We put creativity and inclusivity at the core of our work and don't settle for seeing the world only as it is, but aim to build a world as it could be.

Role Overview: Quality Assurance - Development Director I

The Quality Assurance - Development Director and team are accountable for defining and delivering the Strategic Planning and Operational Vision for the Quality Assurance group. You will collaborate with partner program managers to establish schedules, define budgets and ensure the creation of test coverage and project metrics on a new unannounced title.

A Quality Assurance - Development Director will help develop important knowledge transfer with internal and external game teams. You will work embedded within the Development organization, improve of the QA practice across EA and share knowledge across the organization, have a Quality mindset from a consumer perspective, and be a advocate in game design and implementation decisions.

This role would be hybrid.

Role Description

Quality Assurance - Development Director must have both a solid project management background. Most of your time will be focused on ensuring that project deliverables are completed on time and within budget through active participation in the test responsibilities and processes while maintaining EA’s high standard of quality. Additionally, you will focus on improving the operational effectiveness of the QA effort by assessing current quality assurance practices and incorporating new QA strategies. You will work on department level projects and operational efficiency plans.

You will also spend time managing a direct staff of project leaders, engaging in daily test responsibilities and mentoring/supporting junior level leadership within the department. Monitoring performance and delivering measurable feedback to direct reports is an essential function of this role. Embrace the challenge of mentoring and supporting a team of direct reports and contributing to the development of their careers. Establishing working relationships within the QA department, the QA project team and the outside partners are important to success in this role.

Reporting to the QA group Development Director we’re looking for a passionate Quality Assurance - Project Development Director to join our team to help coordinate and test our titles.

Responsibilities

Primary responsibilities expected are as follows:

• May own whole or parts of large-scale project from the quality point of view with the ability to speak to the project in detail
• Process and workflow management, identifying, building processes to maintain quality standards through different development and live project cycles
• Resource management/planning, financial capacity planning, resource validation and skill-gap assessment
• Project and quality management through test scope / scheduling, evaluating Return on investment and cost vs benefit analysis
• Work with internal / external partners and groups whilst maintaining the quality benchmark and project indicators
• Lead change with the ability to reprioritize business important tasks and promote to keep the team-focused and engaged
• Develop talent, mentors and cultivate others within their project team
• Define, monitor, and improve product quality indicators throughout project duration to give a constant heartbeat on product quality
• Ensure testing processes are followed, influencing partners where needed to protect and uphold product quality
• Collaborator with internal and external partners across a range of technology disciplines and geographic locations
• Promote quality upstream and advocating best practices to achieve this
• Produce and present reports to partners using data that represent product quality indicators
• Active participation in the test responsibilities and processes

Experience

You will speak to the following levels of practical experience

• QA Project Managers are expected to have at a minimum:
  • 7+ years of experience in a software development environment
  • 5 years Project Management or Project Lead experience
  • 5 years minimum of leadership experience
• Risk management and solutions oriented problem solving techniques
• Experienced with financial management, budget tracking, QA cost estimates and constraints
• Communicate across many disciplines
• Understand analytics and indicators as a way of tracking product quality
• Comfortable conversing within engineering disciplines with and eye to promote quality principles
• Test case test management software experience i.e. TestRail, TM4J
• Experience of shipping mobile titles built in UE4 and Unreal
• Bachelor’s degree in any number of related fields including Computer Science, Game Development, Business, etc..
• Excellent knowledge of production life cycle, tools, processes and execution planning
• Experience in a Scrum / Agile software development environment
• Proficient in Jira
• Hands-on experience shipping mobile titles