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Director of Production

Jackbox Games is looking for a Director of Production to join our team!

Who are We?

Jackbox is a small game studio (~74 people) best known for our Jackbox Party Pack franchise: a set of five social party games released every fall. Since 2014, our games--like Quiplash, Drawful, and Trivia Murder Party-- have been featured on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, by Polygon, and in living rooms and finished basements across the world.

In 2020, we had over 200 million users. And we have hard evidence that one of those users was Academy Award-winner Charlize Theron.

You can learn everything you ever wanted to know about how our games work (spoiler: your phone is the controller!) and who we are and what we make at jackboxgames.com.

What’s the Job?

The Jackbox Party Pack’s production team is responsible for defining, driving, and continuously improving production plans and processes to support their development teams in meeting their goals from concept to launch. As the Director of Production, you will be accountable for the success of a team of producers, including its people, processes, and tools. You will also work closely with leads across The Jackbox Party Pack team to organize and communicate goals, timelines, budgets, and decisions, as well as resolve major risk and scope issues throughout development.

We are looking for a leader who is a champion for agile ways of working, who embraces a growth mindset while creating an environment of continuous improvement and excellence, and who is excited and motivated to help develop the management culture at Jackbox Games.

Responsibilities

For the production team:

• Manage members of the production team. Guide their professional development through 1:1s, performance feedback, goal-setting, and personal growth.
• Foster alignment within the production team around studio and project goals while driving a consistent production approach that encourages experimentation and innovation while balancing the need to deliver goals.
• Manage production team capabilities through hiring, internal development, and team structure, which may include reorganizing teams to most efficiently deliver high quality products.

For The Jackbox Party Pack team:

• Collaborate with product and domain leadership to define and implement project goals, roadmaps, budgets, and staffing plans while ensuring alignment with studio needs and best practices.
• Keep us nimble by coaching teams to find ways to simplify or automate processes and workflows across all areas of game development.
• Make information, such as scope, progress, deadlines, risks, and blockers transparent and accessible.
• Improve communication by removing barriers and bringing the right people together.
• Be a champion for agile methodologies to ensure we are constantly inspecting and adapting our work and the ways we work together so we are getting the right feedback as soon as possible.
• Facilitate problem solving conversations around areas of risk or inefficiency by asking “why?” to get to root causes.
• Steer development teams through change management to take ideas from “we should…” to “we are…”

For the studio:

• Help us cultivate an inspiring and rewarding culture for creativity, innovation, and excellence that make Jackbox party games special.
• Help us develop standards for people management at Jackbox Games by modeling best practices for relationship building, coaching, and goal setting.

Ideal Candidates...

• 5+ years of senior-level production experience in game development.
• 2+ years of direct people management experience.
• Have led a creative development team and participated in fostering teamwork and developing processes and organization strategies to improve how those teams function.
• Have a proven track record of applying agile concepts and practices.
• Understand and embody servant-leadership, seeking diverse perspectives from the team and encouraging bottom-up innovation.
• Know how to build consensus and get buy-in from stakeholders, while still advocating for a clear vision.
• See the big picture when it comes to Jackbox Games’ strategies and can align team goals with corporate values and endeavors.
• Have exemplary communication skills, social and emotional intelligence, and empathy.
• Have experience with project management or task tracking software (Jira, Confluence, etc).

We value kind, motivated and creative people. Jackbox Games is a group effort and you must work collaboratively. Everyone here shares a commitment to excellence and a desire to work in a comfortable, friendly atmosphere.

Jackbox Games is committed to providing employment opportunities without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, ancestry, age, veteran status, or disability.

Okay, but what are the perks?!

• Competitive pay and benefits. 401(k) with matching. And we pay 100% of the cost of premiums for medical, dental, vision, disability and life insurance for our employees. We also cover a really nice chunk of the cost of premiums for spouse/partner/dependent medical, dental and vision insurance. Paid parental leave.
• Flexible work schedule and environment. Currently, our employees are encouraged to work where they feel the safest and most productive. Our office in Lincoln Park in Chicago is open (and fully stocked with snacks) for folks that prefer to work in the office. We also offer remote work in the following states: California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin.
• Unlimited PTO. Take time off when you need to recharge, take a trip, or just catch up on life.
• Creative work environment. We are lucky to work in a place that is full of talented and innovative folks. Most of the day, the place is pretty quiet (we’re a focused bunch), but this is punctuated with hilarious outbursts and general merriment.
• Free food either virtually or in the office. We stock our kitchen with snacks as well as offer doordash credits quite frequently.

Interested?

Great, we look forward to reading your application. Please include:

• Your resume.
• A cover letter. You don't need to be a professional writer for this job (we have those) but communication is important so we weigh cover letters heavily. You can (and should) write more, but we won’t evaluate applicants that don’t at least answer these two questions:
• Why are you interested in working at Jackbox Games?
• What is your favorite game and why? There's no right answer and liking games isn’t required for the job. We mostly just want to know if you've read this far.

On the fence? If you're interested in the job but worried you aren't qualified, we encourage you to err on the side of applying. We'd hate to miss out on great candidates just because they're worried they don't check every box on the job description.

We know it is a time commitment to prepare an application and we respect that effort by thoughtfully reviewing every complete application and responding one way or the other. But that kind of thoughtful review means that it sometimes takes us a while to get back to applicants, so please be patient with us and no phone calls.

Thanks for your interest in Jackbox Games!