Simulation Technical Director - The Sims

Electronic Arts

Welcome to Maxis, home to tinkerers, craftspeople, & storytellers. Our drive is to inspire everyone to make a better world through creative play. As the developer of The Sims , we create games and experiences for millions of people around the world and are always looking for new ways to inspire our players. Maxis is a place where you can do what you love and help others grow while doing it; a place where your unique voice can be heard and seen. We put creativity and inclusivity at the core of our work and don't settle for seeing the world only as it is, but strive to build a world as it could be.

Teams are building the next generation game and creative platform, Project Rene and reimagining The Sims that players know and love with even more new ways to play. We're excited you're interested to learn more about how you can join our team and dream big.

Role Expectations

• Lead the technology strategy, development and live operations of Project Rene's simulation engine by working with the lead architect and engineers on the simulation team.
• Partner with engineering people managers to guide and nurture growth of engineers in the simulation team.

• Partner with the game’s Technical Leadership group to define and implement strategic goals and milestones, establish best practices, and promote the core development values of the Simulation engineering team.

• Work with Production, Development Directors, and other disciplines leads to scope tasks and input requirements.
• Create and adjust technical decisions and roadmap priorities for Simulation Tech, using your technical expertise to draw out not only the WHAT & WHEN, but the WHY for the roadmap.
• Provide technical mentorship and guidance to the simulation engineering team.
• Be a hands-on participant in architecture/design for our hardest technical challenges.
• Review completed engineering deliverables before release.
• Collaborate with broader team partners (design, art, XD, and so on) to ensure that engineering interests and values are represented and maintained through the course of development, and that features are being developed with Tech capabilities and performance limitations in mind.
• Identify, manage, and drive to completion, risks and mitigations for Simulation Tech on the project.
• Perform research to acquire new knowledge necessary to perform assigned tasks and maintain the technological evolution of the project.
• Gaina depth of knowledge of The Sims and EA's current game technology.
• Own the hiring process for the simulation team by identifying skill gaps and with with talent acquisition and people managers to finding and recruiting candidates.

You have

• 12+ years of professional experience as a software engineer shipping professional consumer or enterprise facing products
• 5+ years of experience leading a team of software engineers to architect, develop and maintain consumer facing and/or enterprise software products.
• Shipped at least 2 AAA titles in large (100+ person) game teams on PC/Mac/Console/Mobile platforms.
• Shipped at least 1 Live Service game.
• Experience with performance analysis and code optimization.
• Experience collaborating with artists, designers, project managers and other engineers.
• Experience with large scale software technical architecture and design.
• Experience with productive and critical conversations with high performing and low performing engineers in the team.
• Experience with long term career mentorship of software engineers with varying levels of experience.
• Experience with at least one major cloud infrastructure solution (one Amazon, Azure, Google.)
• Expert in at least one of the following domains, and some experience with the other two:
• Game simulation systems/stats driven gameplay system development.
• Character Behavior and/or other gameplay simulation Architecture.
• Simulation Content Pipeline development.

Bonus:

• Experience working with simulation games.
• Proficiency in Unreal.
• Interested in and/or experienced with Machine Learning.