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Senior Engineering Manager (Unannounced Project)

We are looking for an experienced engineering manager who will move heaven and earth to ensure that each engineer under their care is having the best day at work they have ever had, every day.

The primary function of this role is to listen to each member of your team with extreme empathy. Listen to their concerns, frustrations, suggestions, ideas, goals, stories, and anything else they need to discuss or wish to share. Knowing what will make each person’s life at work better, you will coach them to grow, help them work through issues, provide clarity on the team’s diection, encourage them to share what they’ve learned, and learn from others. You will be there for them for whatever they may need to succeed.

Earning the team’s trust will be your first and top priority, and you will do all that you can to keep that trust once earned. You understand that trust is a priceless treasure that is gained by your actions in support of the team and cannot be assigned through any sort of authority your position may hold. With this trust you will work with your team to build and maintain a culture of safety and fun for all people to work, create, be themselves, and have the time of their lives doing it.

Understanding that hiring decisions are the most important decisions a team can make, you will seek out and hire new members to join our quest who will add to our team dynamics, knowledge base, potential to grow, and library of bad jokes.

You will represent your team as you work with other teams, departments, and partners to help shape the studio and the company itself into a better place for all the people to be human beings while they go about using their skills, creativity, and talent to innovate and create amazing games and experiences for our players.

You will facilitate your team developing meaningful production practices that they own and are invested in, whether that be in engineering teams, cross functional working groups, or as individuals. You are a champion of good engineering practices and will work to give engineers the space they need to produce quality code that can run continuously for years. Often this means being a bridge between engineering and non-technical colleagues to help explain some of the bizarre rituals and practices that we call engineering.

About Our Team

The Engineering team at ArenaNet thrives on a wide array of perspectives, experiences, and interests. We know that the best creations come from healthy and friendly teams. Our work is woven together with the efforts of other disciplines and crafts within game development. We seek out voices and ideas that might be new to us. We are always on the lookout for ways to help each other, both within the Engineering team, and throughout the studio as a whole.

Who We Are Looking For

You, our ideal candidate, have been there before. You know what it’s like to be an engineer on a team shipping AAA games. You know what it’s like to have your code scrutinized in a code review, to ship code that crashes the game, and to introduce a bug that QA has written epic poems about as warnings to their newer generations. You know how it feels to be asked for estimates for tasks you just learned about, you know what it’s like to navigate explaining technical constraints to non-technical colleagues while not making it all sound like bad news. You know what it’s like to be an engineer and you see it as your calling to be a guiding light out of the dark places that engineers sometimes find themselves in so they can bask in the glory of solving problems, innovating, and creating never before seen player experiences.

Fear has no place in the work environment, and you know it! You seek to eliminate it in all its forms through communication, clarity, and trust. You can identify learned helplessness. You are cognizant of contributing to it yourself and you work to give people space to grow out of it with care and patience.

You are not afraid to admit that you don’t know something, and you cherish having people reporting to you that are experts in areas that you know little to nothing about. You know that everyone brings different experiences, perspectives, thought processes, and skills to the team and you understand that your position is at the crossroads of these talents, putting you in a position to create the melting pot for the team to come together to make something as a group that is so much better than any individual could devise. Your own experiences are part of this, but just a part.

The work of other disciplines fills you with awe and you have a deep respect for them and an understanding of their needs. You understand that engineers largely support the work of others but also need space and support themselves for quality engineering work.

You understand common production practices and have learned what works best for engineers. While you may have experience in this area, you understand the value of letting the team solve problems and develop day to day approaches that work best for the people working together. You don’t engineer processes for a team, but you do keep your knowledge and experience toolbox close by for when a team needs suggestions, guidance, or help getting over a hump. You keep clear the need for a team to communicate to all teammates, including upper levels of management, the information they need to make good decisions for the project.

Your patience is immense, and your armor is thick. You understand that people have bad days, make mistakes, and sometimes need to burn themselves before they can grow. You know that nobody tries to do a bad job and you are there to help show them the way and catch them when they fall. You know that sometimes that involves hard conversations and, while you may not enjoy them, you are not afraid to be frank with someone when the situation calls for it.

You work in games because it’s fun and you never lose sight of keeping that magic alive for each member of your team who is here because they are following a dream.