Senior Technical Director (Remote)

You are a passionate gamer who enjoys deep diving into new technologies and the business model. You are a team player and have strong communications and leadership skills. You have industry experience in systems design and with game engines such as Unity 3D and/or Unreal Engine. You are a big fan of Clean Code and software design patterns. You relax by reading tech journals and sketching UML diagrams. You are a lifelong learner who is results-driven and detail-oriented. Most of all, you are looking for a friendly working environment filled with like-minded individuals at a studio that prizes integrity, transparency and personal growth. Pocket Pinata Interactive is a Vancouver mobile game development studio practising the art and science of making free-to-play games. We are looking for like minded individuals to join our cause as a full-time Game Technical Director (Remote).

As senior technical director, you are responsible for all technical aspects of a project development. You are a problem solver, lead advisor, and key driver on all technical matters and will engage with multiple teams and disciplines to address all technical issues. In pre-production, you are involved in the technical planning in directing assessing the technical plans for feasibility and maintainability. You determine the project technical requirements by analysing the user, design and art, and systems operations requirements. In production, you supervise the systems designs, monitor the budget, and manage the overall code and project quality.

Perks:

• Good extended health and dental plan
• Flexible work schedule

You will:

• Understand the business problems to be solved, and define the project’s technical vision and scope in collaboration with production, design, and art in an agile development environment.
• Identify technical requirements and tools to deliver on the project vision.
• Identify the technical expertise needed based on the project vision.
• Establish the technical vision for project systems, architectures, deliverables, and environment.
• Define the technical estimates for projects, and involve other discipline leads where appropriate.
• Develop the overall budget for the project technical development in collaboration with Production
• Establish quality standards for the technical deliverables of the project.
• Establish technical architecture and process decisions for software development.
• Serve as the standard escalation point for the project management team for any project technical risks, costs, and duration.
• Drive the technical team to meet schedules, budget, manpower and technical quality targets; this includes third party technical teams and IT departments.
• Drive the adoption of suitable technologies and approaches to improve technical software development standards.
• Drive the adoption and promotion of best practices within the technical team
• Ensure quality of all technical outputs meets client and studio expectations.
• Demonstrate experience and good working knowledge in at least 8 unconnected technical domains and/or technologies
• Evaluate proofs-of-concept for emerging technologies and approaches for the project software development.
• Define, communicate and enforce necessary standards and regulatory compliances, particularly in relation to security and privacy.
• Lead users, technical staff and management to resolve issues in project implementation.
• Recommend investments in new cutting edge technology.
• Recommend suitable technologies and approaches to improve project technical and development standards.
• Report technical progress of projects to stakeholders as required.
• Supervise technological design and design review.
• Track industry developments and best practices in software and development technologies on a regular basis.

You are a great fit for our team if you have…

• 7+ years of industry game development experience
• 2+ years of industry experience with Unity 3D or Unreal Engine
• 5+ years of C# programming experience or other object-oriented programming language
• 3+ years experience applying Clean Code principles to your code
• 2+ years of system/project technical leadership experience
• 2+ years of experience working with UML
• 2+ years of experience troubleshooting mobile/desktop/console specific issues
• 2+ years experience developing and optimising scenes or game systems for performance in Unity 3D or Unreal Engine
• 3+ years of experience with Git or other revision control system
• Excellent technical problem-solving and communication skills
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills
• Proactive and forward thinking lifelong learner able to quickly familiarise yourself with complex legacy systems and code
• A detail-oriented mindset with a strong ability to multitask

Having the following skills is a plus…

• A degree in Computer Science or related field
• Experience with standard industry performance and memory profiling systems
• Experience with RESTful networking and JSON solutions
• Experience with Python and RESTful server programming
• Knowledgeable on Agile Development Practices (Scrum/Kanban)