Tools Director
Larian Studios
Job Summary
Larian Studios seeks a Tools Director to lead a global team in developing and maintaining internal tools for enhanced productivity and creative workflows. Responsibilities include overseeing the vision, design, development, and maintenance of tools; collaborating with creative and engine teams; ensuring user-friendliness, reliability, and scalability; establishing a culture of testing and documentation; supporting large-scale game development (release management, version control, analytics, asset management); enabling modding support; and managing and mentoring the team. The ideal candidate will possess extensive experience in game tools development, strong leadership skills, and proficiency in relevant technologies like C#, C++, Python, and WPF.
Must Have
- Lead global tools development team
- Oversee tools vision, design & development
- Collaborate with creative & engine teams
- Ensure tools are user-friendly & scalable
- 8+ years game tools experience
- Strong team management & mentoring skills
- Proficiency in C#, C++, Python, WPF
Good to Have
- Experience with Maya, Houdini, Wwise
- Experience modernizing game development tools
Job Description
Responsibilities
- Direct and lead a global Tools development team.
- Oversee the vision, design, development, and maintenance of internal tools to enhance productivity and creative workflows.
- Enable team members to independently and rapidly add and iterate ideas and content for our games.
- Define the UX vision for all internal Tools.
- Collaborate closely with Creative teams to understand their needs and incorporate feedback into Tool development.
- Collaborate with the Engine and Gameplay teams to create a unified proprietary engine and tool set.
- Ensure tools are user-friendly, reliable, performant, and scalable.
- Ensure a culture of unit testing, automation testing, and documentation is applied during development.
- Ensure tools meet quality and performance targets.
- Ensure tools support large scale game development, including: release management, version control, production analytics, and asset management.
- Ensure tools can be released to player-developers for game modding.
- Hire, onboard, mentor and develop the Tools team.
- Safeguard company assets, including source code, artwork, tools, and technical know-how.
Requirements
- 4+ years of experience in a directing or senior leadership role.
- 8+ years of experience in creating and shipping games tools or digital creative tools for a large development team.
- Experience developing tools for large scale high production value games.
- Strong team management, mentoring and coaching abilities.
- Strong understanding of industry standard technology, including C#, C++, Python and WPF.
- Strong understanding of modular software systems.
- Proven experience modernising game development tools and executing on long-term technological plans to a high quality, including UI/UX.
- Proven experience working with DCCs, including: Maya, Houdini, and Wwise.
- Upper-intermediate proficiency in English.
- Passion for making and playing great games.
- Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail.
- Strong communication and collaboration skills.