As a senior individual contributor, you will lead the production aspects of development cycles, by leading multiple development teams through the production process. Working with other cross-functional leaders, you’ll be responsible for translating goals for product development, estimating and tracking production schedules and budgets, ensuring timely and accurate asset flow and coordinating resources for the team to achieve success. Your skills in facilitating communication, keeping others motivated and engaged, and contributions in elevating our development environment will be key. This role is accountable for ensuring product development teams have clear goals, process, and standards to deliver high quality outputs, on time and within budget. This position reports to the Chief Operating Officer.
At Undead Labs, we work in highly collaborative, cross-discipline teams because we understand that the best ideas are ones we generate together. We are creators of the hit survival-fantasy franchise State of Decay, played by millions, and we operate independently as part of a network of first-party Microsoft studios. We have a rich history of entrepreneurship and empowerment that will carry us forward as we reach new levels of quality, ambition, and polish.
Core Responsibilities & Objectives:
- Translate product goals into development schedules, by working with a group of cross-functional individuals, including product leaders, discipline leads, Executive Producer, and individual contributors.
- Support and reinforce team goals in your communications and actions.
- Foster engagement, safety, collaboration, accountability, and community within the development team.
- Ensure communication to varied audiences that provides the right level of transparency and alignment.
- Track and share the team's progress to goals with the project and studio leadership teams so they understand timelines, status, context, risks, and planned mitigations. If trajectory appears risky apply appropriate mitigations.
- Engage with our people managers to ensure all team members have the right amount and type of work, and can both perform and grow through their work.
- Ensure that development goals are both aspirational and achievable.
- Ensure timeliness, as well as excellence in quality, for all development team outputs
- Help shape the design of production tools and practices that impact the discipline and overall effectiveness of our development teams
- Collaborate with peer producers to support product and people successes across products and development teams.
Core Traits and Experience
- Demonstrated expertise in project methodologies, with the ability to articulate strengths and shortcomings of different methods, and how to tailor approaches to meet development and project team needs.
- Demonstrated ability to grasp the development target, break it down, identify interdependencies, sequence and assign work, and accurately scope for delivery.
- Ability to identify potential blockers to development team progress, and eliminate or mitigate risks.
- A collaborative and optimistic approach to working with others that unifies team members and fosters an environment of safety, inclusiveness, and excellence.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills that can cater to multiple audiences and disciplines - from design, engineering/technical, art, product leaders and studio management team.
- Demonstrated ability to solve complex problems in effective and resourceful ways.
- Strong organization skills, including attention to detail and follow through.
- Demonstrated ability to drive tactical and strategic initiatives independently
- Game development experience, or experience in a creative and iterative development environment, strongly desired.
- Experience with Agile development and/or project management certifications, strongly desired.
- Ideally brings 5 or more years of experience in a similar role.
Physical Requirements
- Close vision to monitors and screens, consistently working on computer equipment such as keyboards and monitors, long periods of sitting.
- Noise levels are low to moderate in the work environment.
Reasonable accommodations can be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
Undead Labs is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations, and ordinances.
We look forward to hearing from you!