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Senior Director of Engineering

About Playable Worlds

Playable Worlds is a team of talented and creative game industry professionals working together on a sandbox MMO built for the cloud. Led by Raph Koster (Ultima Online; Star Wars Galaxies) Playable Worlds offers a collaborative and diverse work environment, competitive pay and benefits, and an opportunity to create new kinds of gameplay and experiences in online worlds that feel real and engaging.

All positions at Playable Worlds are currently remote. The salary range for this position is $240,000 to $330,000 annually, & stock options.

Summary

This Senior Director of Engineering position is responsible for the technical direction and management of our Engineering team building a cutting-edge sandbox MMORPG and accompanying game platform. You are both an innovator and a self-starter, willing to be hands-on when needed and capable of embracing bleeding-edge technology to build never-before-seen player experiences.

The ideal candidate will have a background in cloud computing, engineering outsourcing, architecting scalable systems, game development, platform development, direct management of Engineering teams, and strong communication skills with both Engineering team members and peer teams including Art, Design, Production, and Executives.

Essential Job Functions

• Set and maintain technical vision and technical roadmaps for both the platform and the flagship game.
• Lead and inspire the team to design and build the company’s metaverse platform technology underlying the game.
• Assess and make recommendations on technology, products, and services that provide opportunities to increase development or service delivery efficiency.
• Lead the engineering team in developing architectural, coding, and procedural standards that reinforce product goals.
• Working with the CCO and Game Director, build the company’s flagship sandbox MMORPG providing architectural, coding, and procedural standards that reinforce product goals.
• Dynamic comprehension of emergent issues, and the ability to come up with data driven solutions.
• Lead the engineering organization to provide a high level of service to customers of our online game(s) once they are live.
• Manage Engineering team priorities to stay in alignment with current product needs
• Provide coaching and mentoring to Engineering department employees.
• Work with and manage deliverables from third parties and contractors, as needed.
• Collaborate with the executive and product leadership teams to ensure that technical work is executed on-schedule and on-budget.

Knowledge/Skill/Ability Requirements

• Experience level: A minimum of ten (10) years of game and software industry experience, with at least five (5) of those years spent directly managing Engineering teams. Five (5) or more years of experience with game engines such as Unity3D or Unreal Engine. Five (5) or more years experience with cloud computing and three (3) or more years experience outsourcing engineering.
• Education level: Bachelor’s degree or higher in computer science, computer engineering, or a related field, highly preferred.
• Shipped at least two (2) game titles using client/server architecture.
• Shipped at least two (2) products using cloud computing. Experience with cloud services and cloud hosting such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud.
• Worked with at least two (2) engineering outsourcing companies.
• Deep understanding of full-stack development concepts.
• Deep understanding of agile development.
• Expert knowledge of one or more programming languages such as C/C++ and C#.
• Expert knowledge of one or more scripting languages such as JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, or Lua.
• Ability to assess engineering work quality and performance.
• Ability to adapt to changes quickly and move fast in new directions.
• Skilled at recruiting, mentoring, motivating, and developing both onsite and remote technical talent.
• Experience with managing 3rd party development teams and contracts.
• Experience with managing live operations of a game-as-a-service.

Bonus Points for Any of These

• Shipped one or more massively multiplayer online game.
• Experience with all phases of a product life-cycle, from ideation through development through live operations.
• Project management, product ownership, and/or production experience.
• Experience with engineering in a startup environment.

Location

• Playable Worlds is headquartered in San Marcos, California. All positions are currently remote.