Development Director (Games)

Description

Who We Are

We are Skybound.

We love creators. We love fans. We love thrilling games, indelible images and moving stories. Our roots are in comics, but our brands extend to video games, television, movies, merchandise, and live experiences. We take special pride in original tales, fresh characters, and diverse voices.

From well-known franchises to freshly-minted originals, we offer the chance to join brilliant creators shaping a new generation of entertainment in a concentrated, agile environment where every perspective matters, and any idea can create a breakthrough.

Opportunity

Skybound is looking for an experienced and passionate Development Director to help build a thrilling new game franchise. Development Directors manage the end-to-end production plan for our games. They lead cross team collaboration, drive consistent, stable releases, manage quality processes, and build operational excellence. This role is the project management backbone of the game, coordinating a multidisciplined team as they deliver electrifying results. The ideal candidate will be passionate about bringing visibility, process, and follow-through on commitments.

As a Development Director, you will work collaboratively with cross-functional production, co-development, central service and publishing teams, developing a new, unannounced project. You’ll create and contribute to multiple pipelines and processes and help maintain the highest bar for quality. Informed by an expert development team and strong studio support, you are responsible for building and tracking to a comprehensive project plan for multiple platforms, through launch and beyond. If you love expert development, take joy in unraveling complexity and dependencies, communicate and promote creative achievement, and thrill in exciting intellectual property and fast-paced gameplay, this is the role for you.

Reports: This position will report to the EVP, Production

Responsibilities: Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Project planning, goal setting, production tooling, release management and development process
• Constant communication, stakeholder and team alignment and expectation setting
• Ongoing prioritization and scoping to ensure predictability and plan visibility
• Meeting formats, management of team roles and responsibilities
• Dependency management and risk tracking
• Tactical milestone management; maintain a snapshot of scope, goals and feature progress
• Own Jira administration; create and maintain dashboards, reports, tracking methods
• Identify project risks, and develop strategies to mitigate them
• Ensure production methodology is applied consistently team-wide
• Troubleshoot, identify, and quickly resolve production issues and/or inefficiencies
• Coordinate strategy to concentrate testing resources to inform project initiatives
• Recommend programs to improve hardware infrastructure, version control, and automated systems to reach new standards of development efficiency

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience in game development
• 2+ Games shipped with significant scope of ownership
• Outstanding project management capabilities, documentation, tracking and transparency
• Strong attention to detail, well organized, excellent at communicating plans, and highly collaborative
• Deep experience with JIRA

Preferred Qualifications

• Project management certifications
• Outsource vendor management experience
• Passion for video game development, combat-oriented games, and Skybound IP

Job Type: Regular, Full-Time

Salary Range: $140,000-$180,000

• Actual base salary is dependent on several factors including but not limited to; market dynamics, location and region, experience, specialized skills/training (education), level of responsibility, budgetary considerations, tenure at the company (for current employees), etc.
• The salary range listed is just one component of the total compensation package for employees
• Compensation decisions are dependent on circumstances of each role

Skybound offers a wide array of benefits including medical, dental, vision, life insurance, flexible spending and dependent care accounts, as well as free counseling through our Employee Assistance Program (EAP). We also offer a 401K plan with 4% match, 12 weeks of paid parental leave, generous time off, wellness benefits, and tuition reimbursement.

Company Overview

Skybound is a multiplatform content company working closely with creators and their intellectual properties, extending stories and universes to new platforms, including comics, television, film, tabletop and video games, books, digital content, events, and beyond. We are home to critically-acclaimed global franchises, including The Walking Dead and Invincible.

Skybound Games produces, publishes and distributes video and tabletop games across all genres, including the multi-million-unit selling The Walking Dead video game series. In addition to our wholly-owned franchises, we work with independent developers to foster and create original games with compelling characters and worlds, strong creator and artistic focus, and innovative approaches to engaging genres.

Invincible is one of Skybound's tentpole franchises (celebrating 20 years!) and spans the world of comic books, merchandise, video games, and the critically acclaimed adult animated television series on Prime Video. Now in its second season, the television show has consistently ranked as one of Prime Videos top-streamed series with a 99% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Based on the groundbreaking comic book by Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker, and Ryan Ottley, Invincible revolves around 18-year-old Mark Grayson, who’s just like every other guy his age—except his father is (or was) the most powerful superhero on the planet. Still reeling from Nolan’s betrayal in Season One, Mark struggles to rebuild his life as he faces a host of new threats, all while battling his greatest fear - that he might become his father without even knowing it.

The show stars Steven Yeun, with Sandra Oh, Zazie Beetz, Grey Griffin, Chris Diamantopoulos, Walton Goggins, Gillian Jacobs, Jason Mantzoukas, Ross Marquand, Khary Payton, Zachary Quinto, Andrew Rannells, Kevin Michael Richardson, Seth Rogen, and J.K. Simmons. Executive producers include Skybound's own Kirkman, David Alpert, and Margaret M. Dean.

Equal Opportunity Employer

At Skybound we value diversity and are looking for extraordinary employees of all backgrounds! Skybound is an Equal Opportunity Employer and provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, citizenship, age, genetic information, disability, hair texture or veteran status. In addition to federal law requirements, Skybound complies with all applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination.

Skybound will consider applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the CA Fair Chance Act and Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance.