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Vice President, Partner Productions

Blackbird Interactive is a creative-fueled, future-driven, independent game studio where the best talent in the industry can find long-term careers to help grow their abilities while working on a wide range of projects, which encompass world-class IPs as well as our own creations across multiple genres.

Blackbird is looking for a VP, Partner Productions to lead one of the studio’s key revenue-generating Business Units.

Partner Productions houses all of Blackbird Interactive’s games that have signed with external publishers (with the exception of projects in Strategic Projects). This Business Unit provides our teams with a supportive development culture, effective tech infrastructure, and established best practices, tools, and learnings from our other games. The Business Unit also provides the studio and our publishing partners with consistent and knowledgeable leadership and effective financial and project reporting.

Reporting to the President, the VP, Partner Productions is responsible for healthy partnerships with publishers, license holders, and external development groups; world-class game development practices; and ensuring that Blackbird is a go-to development partner by working to support and maintain BBI’s reputation in the industry.

The VP, Partner Productions is a member of the studio senior leadership team, and partners closely with all other members of the CSuite to set the direction for the studio as a whole. The VP, Partner Productions has a particularly close relationship with the VP, IP Development to facilitate migration of projects from IP Dev into Partner Productions as they sign with publisher partners.

Responsibilities

• Guiding the strategic vision and goals of Partner Productions, in conjunction with studio leadership
• Interacting with all of our publishing partners at a high level, acting as a first point of contact for new relationships as well as a point of escalation throughout the life cycle of our projects
• Receiving newly signed projects from our IP Development Business Unit and rolling them smoothly into production, managing the internal process as well as the communication hand-off between points of contact at BBI and the publisher
• Establishing and refining transparent and reliable publisher-facing processes including planning, reporting, milestone delivery, and change management
• Overseeing the collection of project budgets that cover all costs of the Business Unit, including salaries, infrastructure, external development, travel, etc.
• Approving plans, schedules, and status reports across the projects
• Creating and refining best practices for game development methodologies, production processes, and tools across the Business Unit, while also considering how those best practices could be applied to the studio as a whole
• Partnering with HR to recruit, develop and retain top talent, creating opportunities for staff and candidates from marginalized or underrepresented groups.
• Working with other studio leadership to successfully manage internal studio staffing, resource planning, ensuring efficient headcount utilization as well as growing future talent
• Cultivating a culture of creativity, collaboration, efficiency, respect and excellence, in a fun work environment
• Working closely with studio leadership to uphold and constantly improve a solid and inclusive culture across the company
What does success look like for our VP, Partner Productions?
• Game teams that are proud of what they create and how they create it
• Publishers that have clear points of contact and escalation
• Games that are shipped on time and in budget
• Games that uphold BBI’s creative reputation and high fidelity in art, design, audio, etc.
• A break-even P&L that allows us to invest profits into all areas of the business

Requirements

• 10 or more years working in the game industry
• Experience managing teams of 80+ people across multiple projects
• Experience managing budgets of $20M+
• Experience working with external partners, suppliers, agencies, etc.
• Intimate knowledge of the games industry and a wide range of development practices
• Shipped 5+ AAA games in a senior leadership role, ideally on multiple platforms
• Education or accreditation in a related field (business, project management, finance, tech) a plus
Expectations of senior leadership at BBI

Regardless of the area of focus, the following expectations apply to all of our senior leadership.

Leading Yourself
• Personal accountability
• Resilience and adaptability
• Respect and integrity
Leading Others
• Effective priority setting and delegation
• Conflict resolution
• Accountable for both team successes and challenges
• Change implementation and management
• Talent development and performance management
• Inclusive mindset
Leading a Business Unit
• Set and communicate clear goals
• Translate strategy into action
• Drive results
• Lead change
• Foster innovation and engagement
• Create alignment
• Manage complexity
Leading the Organization
• Create vision and strategic alignment
• Identify strategies for new business opportunities
• Define and model the culture and values of the organization
• Create a culture of innovation
• Enact change
• Global mindset