This job might no longer be available.

Senior Development Director

At Kabam, we’re constantly raising the bar of excellence in free-to-play gaming. We hire for passion and diversity so that we can triumph in our collective skill. Our teams are made up of a fusion of personalities and interests bound together by a collaborative nature, fun-loving culture, and a drive to do what it takes to make great games. And this is where you come in…

You love working with teams to ensure they are focused, well organized and getting everything they need to deliver great work. You act as a force multiplier for the teams you help manage. You enjoy working with Producers to prioritize work, manage risks, and plan out different scenarios. A natural leader, you are perceptive and persuasive and exercise radical candour to support your teams. You have experience working with technical and non-technical people. Most importantly, you have an authentic passion for supporting people with their career development and looking for ways to motivate them to deliver the best games in the industry.

You will be part of a high-performing team where individuals are constantly encouraged to voice their ideas and opinions. You’ll help us build and operate great games through interaction with team members, peers, and product leadership. You’ll enjoy elevating the team members to grow, learn, and deliver phenomenal work.

In this role, you can expect to:

• Roadmap - area of focus: Custodian of Release Milestones / Green-light process for assigned project and how these evolve with lower-level milestone goal successes/failures. Mentors and advises project-assigned DDs/PMs on tactics surrounding managing the schedule
• Risks: Spots risks and dependencies well in advance and actively track and mitigates them within a project or shared function. Plans for contingency
• Conflict Assessment and Resolution: Proactively identifies and resolves conflicts between schedule, staffing, technology and design objectives within the project
• Budget and Resources: Works with business leadership to develop high-level project constraints - genre, budget, expertise, dates, strategy
• Functional Workflows: Works cross-project to customize and optimize functional workflows and approval steps based on institutional wisdom
• Quality: Interfaces with directors and EPs to calibrate project success metrics
• KPIs: Moves the team from one project or release phase to the next while ensuring a strong focus on quality, collaboration and communication. Collaborates with Producer to establish KPIs by which to measure phase success
• Business Review: Presenter at Business Review / Phase Gate reviews
• Career Management: Manages careers and performance of a variety of disciplines, including software engineers and DDs franchise-wide (within 1 business unit)
• Project Communication: Interacts primarily with cross-project leadership groups and multi-project. Facilitates meetings and action items
• Comp and Hiring: Provides or contributes to annual reviews and compensation planning. Has hiring and performance management responsibility for direct and indirect reports
• Team Health: Accountable for project team capacity and health
• Craft Excellence: Drives quality and integrity of the Development Director discipline within the organization. Facilitates staff development programs

To be successful in this role, your background includes:

• 10+ years of similar experience working in a medium to large tech company (preferably gaming); Bachelor’s Degree or above; additional Project Management certification preferred.
• Game Experience: Direct experience leading all major game phases (e.g. concept, pre-production, production, live production)
• Org Design: Experience designing feature team roles, reporting relationships, and sourcing company-leading candidates
• Communication: Communicates clearly, concisely and professionally with all levels of internal staff and external technology partners as applicable; influences the team to achieve project goals. Influences strategic and other issues which affect the business internally and externally
• Collaboration: Drives collaboration effectively with others in the same discipline, across feature groups and cross-discipline on a regular basis; works closely with game leadership team
• Leadership: Shares expertise across disciplines in the studios; Mentors within the team. May supervise the activities of others. Sets the tone for positive team culture and contributes to the great culture at Kabam

Our success is due to the hard work of our people. We share our success with our people through flexible benefits and reward programs, sweet swag, snacks, and more. Here’s a look at some of the support we provide our people:

• Extended Health Coverage: effective day one, no waiting period! Our benefits cover health, dental, life, disability, and extended paramedical services such as vision care, mental health practitioners, massage, physiotherapy, acupuncture, and much more.
• DEIB Benefits: DEIB is important to us and to our people - that’s why our benefits include gender-affirming care, fertility care, and other hormonal treatments and drugs.
• Flexible Spending Accounts: our benefits are built on a flex credit model, so you’re able to choose the coverage levels that are right for you, and allocate the rest to a group RRSP/TFSA, Health Spending account, and/or Personal Spending Account.
• RRSP Matching: everyone retires eventually, and we help our people save for their futures with a contribution matching program once you reach 90 days with us.
• PTO and Parental Leave: we offer paid parental leave, unlimited paid time off, paid time off for volunteering, sick leave, and holiday closures.
• Employee and Family Assistance Program: this program provides crisis management support, immediate mental health care, and generalized support for emotional, mental, and financial well-being.
• Telus Virtual Health: we provide increased access to remote healthcare providers for prescription refills or referrals from the comfort of your home.
• Learning and growth: We encourage people to grow both personally and professionally, and support this through regular lunch & learns and an education stipend.
• Pay transparency: We share with employees the pay range their role falls within and clear career maps to determine how they can grow within their role or level-up to a promotion.
• Cool spaces: Our offices are in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Montreal, Prince Edward Island, and Seoul. Whether it’s summers on the rooftop patio in Downtown Vancouver, watching the fireworks in Montreal’s South Shore, or trying local eats in Downtown Charlottetown - we want our people to feel like their time spent in office is worthwhile!
• Giving back: Our ‘Agents of Change’ initiative is how we support the communities close to our heart, and we have several events and fundraisers every year that Agents of Change organize.

Excited by this opportunity? Kabam is dedicated to growing our diverse and inclusive workforce, so if your past experience doesn’t perfectly match the listed requirements we encourage you to apply anyways - you could be a great fit for this or other positions.

We invite you to apply now and start the conversation with us. Together, we can create and support some of the best games ever made and entertain the world!

Kabam is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer committed to building a diverse and equitable workplace, and inclusive environment for all existing and potential employees. Employment decisions are based on candidate qualifications and business need, not race, color, ancestry, place of origin, age, sex (including pregnancy), gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, political belief, religion, creed, marital or family status, medical condition, genetic information, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, prior criminal conviction or any other protected class in accordance with federal, state or provincial and local laws and ordinances. Accommodations will be provided as requested by candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.

Kabam is a world leader in developing entertaining, immersive, and highly social multiplayer games, bringing high-quality graphics, next-generation technology, and revolutionary gameplay to players around the world.

Founded in 2006, Kabam has studios and offices in Vancouver, Montreal and Charlottetown in Canada, Los Angeles and San Francisco in the United States, and in Seoul, South Korea. Kabam is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Netmarble Games.