BLACKMILL GAMES - STUDIO OPERATIONS DIRECTOR (M/W/NB)

BlackMill Games brings history to life in video games. Every project is carefully researched to provide authentic details combined with compelling gameplay within a historical setting.

Over the last decade we have built a solid reputation as a developer for supporting and caring for our games in the long run. We always go the extra mile to deliver games made with great attention to detail. 

https://www.blackmillgames.com/

Coming from humble origins as solo developers, the team has organically grown over the last few years to 20 talented people from a variety of locations.

BlackMill Games is a fully remote company and has strong methodologies around this.

The team has an open and friendly culture where you will feel right at home.

Job description

As an enthusiastic Studio Operations Director you work in tandem with the founder and CEO to drive the operations and steer cross-functional projects. In charge of Finance, HR and Communication as a whole, you play an integral role in building and preparing the next steps of BlackMill Games.

Main tasks

Your main missions focus on 4 areas:

1°) Business : as a true leader your endorse your role to champion strategic initiatives to have an impact on projects and studio roadmap.

• Roadmap: in tandem with the CEO you review product resource and execution plans
• Business Development : you manage and develop best practices, KPI’s, and procedures to facilitate strategic development decisions
• Change management : you lead change management strategies for BlackMill Games initiatives whether through executive communication, town halls, reviews, workshops or other inclusive methods

2°) HR : you lead BlackMill Games’ team and culture

• Talent acquisition: you attract, recruit, develop, identify missing gaps and retain talent
• People performance: you lead HR campaign, conduct performance reviews and professional growth plans
• Team culture: you make plans and decisions for bettering the team culture and work ethic, such as improving processes, implementing ideas for fostering more social connection within the team and actively scout for industry networking and cooperation opportunities, such as events and fares.

3°) Finance : you manage the studio’s budgets, the excellent quality reports, and on-time predictability targets.

• Monthly financial reporting: you prepare our monthly financial reporting to the group, analyze game sales and trends with the assistance of marketing partners and the publisher
• Payroll & invoices: you handle monthly payout of employees and freelancer invoices. You monitor the hours per staff member using a centralized registration system. You set up, optimize and improve these systems where needed.
• Financial supervision:

-  you participate to the monthly manager meeting with CEO to oversee the development budget and make decisions accordingly.

-  You monitor costs of different features and updates, projects and marketing spends.

-  Bi-monthly reports: you prepare financial overviews for the shareholder board each other month, you monitor game performance, and budget.

4°) Operations : as a team partner, you lead and update execution around key game development processes

• Operational Supervisor: based on budget and team culture, you monitor the different features and timeframes for games and updates. You are part of the weekly production meetings with the Producer, Technical and Art director, supervising their decisions. In this role you are also involved with company strategy as decided in the monthly management meetings. You hold meetings with the publishers in person or digitally to coordinate their services.
• Partner communication : you are the main point of contact for any of the external partners such as localization and testing agencies as well as stores, accountants and external administrators.

Requirements

• 8+ years of operations and leadership experience in a Game development environment
• You have a bachelor degree in Business, Marketing or similar disciplines, ideally MBA or business background
• You have an experience with HR management practices and are familiar with Dutch labor laws and requirements
• You have an experience working in a remote team and you feel comfortable with that in the long term
• You have an understanding of how games are made and are familiar with agile development methodologies
• You have an exceptional leadership skills with the ability to challenge and influence a variety of partners
• You are able to prepare/present high impact business cases/analyses/recommendations to leadership team
• You have proficient change management skills, i.e., comfortable with ambiguity and constant change, yet able to set priorities and execute on commitments
• You are a self-starter who is able to identify and solve problems
• You are a collaborative communicator, customer oriented with exceptional decision making and leader of teams

Additional information

• Work on a million selling commercial game franchise
• Close knit team with various game activities outside of work hours
• The opportunity to shape parts of the games as you see fit
• Remote work and flexible working hours
• Role distribution can be tailored to your preferences over time
• Healthy no-crunch work ethic