Senior Producer

Jackbox Games is looking for a Senior Producer to join our team!

Who are We?

Jackbox is a small game studio (~80 people) best known for our Jackbox Party Pack franchise: a set of five social party games released every fall. Since 2014, our games--like Quiplash, Drawful, and Trivia Murder Party-- have been featured on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, by Polygon, and in living rooms and finished basements across the world.

In 2020, we had over 200 million users. And we have hard evidence that one of those users was Academy Award-winner Charlize Theron.

You can learn everything you ever wanted to know about how our games work (spoiler: your phone is the controller!) and who we are and what we make at jackboxgames.com.

What’s the Job?

A Senior Producer is a member of the production department, reporting to the Director of Production, and shepherds a game team from concept to completion while serving as a subject matter expert and mentor around agile project management, the scrum framework, and servant leadership. You’ll work closely with a game team and its leads to ensure that they consistently define and deliver high priority goals. Along the way, you’ll make agile adjustments when necessary, meet milestones and other deadlines, provide motivation and enthusiasm, and ultimately ship a game everyone is proud of, all with a healthy work/life balance in a fun, upbeat environment. While the game director is responsible for defining a vision for the game, the game’s producer is responsible for facilitating the Agile processes to achieve that vision. 

As a senior producer, you could be assigned to simultaneously produce multiple small-to-medium scale projects with abbreviated schedules, or a standalone larger-scale project on a longer timeline. 

Responsibilities

• Shepherd a game from pre-production to ship by supporting a collaborative, multidisciplinary team of developers, including facilitating planning sessions, charters, and retrospectives, defining schedules, running daily stand-ups, identifying challenges, and resolving impediments as they arise.
• Work directly with game leadership to strategize all phases of development, foster alignment with an emphasis on creative thinking, playtesting, and iteration.
• Facilitate clear communication across the game team, company, and external partners, ensuring everybody knows what they need to know and where to find that information.
• Manage the game’s product backlog, sprints, user stories, and tasks in Jira.
• Run effective meetings, ensuring that all voices are heard and people walk away with clearly defined and agreed upon next steps.
• Update supporting documentation in Confluence, Google Docs, and supporting tools.
• Monitor and tend to team health and morale.
• Coach your game teams to improve by supporting a feedback culture, inspecting and adapting their product and the way they work.
• Work with fellow producers to identify and implement improved production processes and methodology across the company.
• Mentor junior producers via skill sharing and reviews.
• Demonstrate knowledge of industry trends and bring new ideas to the team.
• Maintain relationships with 3rd parties as needed.

Ideal Candidates...

• Are friendly, empathetic and adaptable.
• Motivate their teams with enthusiasm and foster a positive, inclusive and collaborative environment.
• Have at least 3-6 years of professional experience as a game producer working in an Agile/Scrum environment on a medium-to-large sized, multidisciplinary team.
• Have a keen eye for details, with advanced skills in communication, coordination, documentation and transparency.
• Have advanced prioritization, project management and multitasking skills.
• Are proficient in planning, scoping, and forecasting of large scale projects. 
• Can identify risks to production early and work with others to mitigate risk before it becomes a problem.
• Take action and solve large scale problems with minimal oversight.
• Solicits personal feedback from others and is eager to find ways to improve.
• Have experience with a task management/defect tracking tool. We use JIRA, but experience with any tool is fine. 

And it would be nice if you also had…

• Worked on a game or similar project from start to finish, or got really close (shipping games is hard!)
• Great party game ideas or a couple good jokes.

We value kind, motivated, and creative people. Jackbox Games is a group effort and you must work collaboratively. Everyone here is committed to excellence and desires to work in a comfortable, friendly atmosphere.

Jackbox Games is committed to providing opportunities without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, ancestry, age, veteran status, or disability. 

Okay, but what are the perks?

• Pay range: $79,799 - $119,177. Please note: individual compensation packages are based on factors unique to each candidate and position, including (but not limited to) skill set, experience, and qualifications.

• 401(k) with matching and various medical plans. We pay 100% of the cost of premiums for dental, vision, disability, and life insurance for our employees. We also cover a really nice chunk of the cost of premiums for spouse/partner/dependent medical, dental, and vision insurance. 
• Flexible work schedule and environment. Currently, our employees are encouraged to work where they feel the safest and most productive. Our office in Lincoln Park in Chicago is open (and fully stocked with snacks) for folks who prefer to work in the office. We also offer remote work in the following states: California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin.
• Flexible PTO. Take time off when you need to recharge, take a trip, or just catch up on life.
• Annual stipends for therapy, growth, wellness, and home office equipment to encourage our employees’ lifelong learning pursuits and support mental and physical health.
• Creative work environment. We are lucky to work in a place that is full of talented and innovative folks. Most of the day, the place is pretty quiet (we’re a focused bunch), but this is punctuated with hilarious outbursts and general merriment.
• Free food either virtually or in the office. We stock our kitchen with snacks as well as offer doordash credits quite frequently.
  

Interested?

Great, we look forward to reading your application. Please include:

• Your resume.
• A cover letter. You don't need to be a professional writer for this job (we have those) but communication is important so we weigh cover letters heavily.

On the fence? If you're interested in the job but worried you aren't qualified, we encourage you to err on the side of applying. We'd hate to miss out on great candidates just because they're worried they don't check every box on the job description.

We know it is a time commitment to prepare an application and we respect that effort by thoughtfully reviewing every complete application and responding one way or the other. But that kind of thoughtful review means that it sometimes takes us a while to get back to applicants, so please be patient with us and no phone calls.

Thanks for your interest in Jackbox Games!