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Development Director

About Splash Damage

Located in the London borough of Bromley, Splash Damage's heritage is all about crafting the world's most engaging multiplayer experiences working with some of the most iconic and exciting games and studios in the world.

We're growing our studio for exciting new AAA projects on PC and Console, and are looking for talented and passionate developers to help build and run them.

We really look after our staff with a comprehensive package of perks and benefits, and have been awarded The Sunday Times’s Best Companies accreditation three years running - the only game studio in the UK to be listed in the top-100!

We're passionate about our games and believe our teams craft better experiences when they have a range of perspectives and opinions to draw from and we are committed to growing diversity across our studio to consistently enable that.

About Development Management at Splash Damage

Development Managers are the execution pioneers here at Splash Damage, responsible for building and delivering game experiences that continually delight our fans on a daily basis.

We are the guardians of agile development process and practice; are responsible for driving alignment and accountability within each game team; are relentlessly focused on continued improvement; and ensure partners goals are met with mind-blowing ends.

The Development Management team is a collective hivemind, collaborating with their product teams, operational disciplines and studio leadership, sharing knowledge and best practices. We are stewards of accountability making sure every developer here owns their products, processes and quality. We keep teams balanced, projects on track and stakeholders informed. We strive for smarter delivery, stronger teams and building forward-thinking live experiences that our players, and ourselves are all proud of.

What you're responsible for:

A Development Director leads and drives a game's overall development plan, constantly focused on team performance and health whilst executing against the ongoing vision for the game. They are entrusted with bringing together the people, materials and tools, un encumbering teams through constant direction, mentoring and management; and are not afraid to change agile production process to match team performance to ensure a strong focus on quality, teamwork, communication and improvement to continually execute great games and content.

As a Development Director you own the project plan to launch and continually operate the game in on time, to quality, and within budget. Drawing on your agile leadership experience, you are able to continually review and improve the development process and team performance, and executive development plans to suit different projects.

You are quality-first focused and understand the needs of our players and the business. You will be accountable for the overall project plan and make data-driven decisions to improve your teams and align them around the long-term plans for operating a GaaS. You will be the voice of reason when needed, as teams balance creative ambition with their proven capacity to execute on time. You will be the single source of truth and represent the state and the outlook of the project internally and to external clients; and able to foster a open, fun and transparent development culture that makes teams and players love the games we make.

If you pull this off in year one, you can expect to gain additional scale to your role and everything that comes with that.

What we'd like to see:

- A gamer: you love games, you play games, you take play seriously – it’s what drove you to the industry and why you love coming to work every single day
- A strategist: your careful planning and dream to produce results makes you an effective leader who can balance and prioritize short-term solutions with the long-term vision and goals; when making key decisions, you leave no stone unturned.
- A tactical delegator: you know how to get things done by using your tailored and proven management skills and clinical handling of agile development to allow your team to execute on the goals and craft the best product possible.
- Aspirational leader: you help others empower themselves by fostering an environment of shared ownership, accountability, constructive criticism, recognition, appreciation, and collaboration; you communicate daily with the team to update them on issues, achievements, priorities and goals.
- An information sponge: You are able to collect and articulate it with the teams and clients on a regular basis, tailoring your style and the content suitable to the audience at hand.
- A communications specialist: you know that good leadership is based on clear and aligned communication and trust. You are an ambitious leader that constantly maintains a high standard of openness and trust with every team member and expect the same high level of patience from your team as you do yourself.
- A flawless executioner: you've got the entire project mapped out with a clear view of the likely obstacles that are in your path and always have a crafted plan to steer clear of them through agile production and planning and advise other project leaders from falling over the same pitfalls.

Studio Culture Splash Damage offers a fun, friendly and dynamic working environment. Everyone here shares a real passion for video games that shows in daily office life. We regularly get together for social events - game nights, quizzes, sports, parties - and believe in the long-term dedication to our people by investing heavily in their skills through an industry-leading internal education programme designed to helping people develop their skills. Find out more on our Culture page.