Production Director

We are looking for a full-time Production Director to work on-site in Vienna, Austria. You’ll lead our production team, overseeing all projects at the company, including work-for-hire projects and our very own development (such as HOWL or other unannounced projects). Read on below for details!

Although we believe in people defying our expectations and finding their own ways to be effective, this role comes with a handful of boxes to check. But instead of harping on bullet-points we would like to try and describe what kind of person we imagine would absolutely rock this role. Consider this a love letter to that imaginary person and if you recognize some of yourself in it, send us a message!

Here’s what you do

You are managing projects based on our own intellectual property as well as coordinating work for hire projects with international partner companies. Your high-level objectives include guiding, coordinating and reviewing the work of your team of producers and QA managers. This is accomplished by collaborating with them on a daily basis and reminding them to question what they do and why - while never losing sight of company goals.

You are proactively working towards establishing systems for planning, measuring, and reporting project progress, and constantly refining these systems and processes. In doing so, you coordinate your teams and report their status, progress and development outlook to company management.

You work closely with different external partners and internal teams, acting as the natural first point of contact for both. You read between the lines to actively seek out and solve communication hurdles between teams or individuals. Your written and verbal communication is guided by diligence, a desire for clarity and empathy.

You pro-actively identify, manage, and mitigate organization risks. In doing so, you help teams understand and act according to the creative director’s vision for their project.

Acting as a guide and coach for your team of producers, you learn what they are good at as well as how to get them up to speed with topics still outside their comfort zone. You work diligently to increase the number of things your producers can be trusted with and don’t shy away from making tough calls if you find yourself spending too much of your own time supporting individuals on your team.

Here’s what you bring

You are very familiar with workflows and processes in game development. There may be similar skills from traditional software development or creative agency work that are relevant to this position - Let’s talk about your specific background!

Numbers don’t scare you. Be it development budgets, time estimates, sales forecasts, profit and loss calculations - you’ve got what it takes to make them work for our benefit.

You are curious and inquisitive. You don’t necessarily know everything, you are willing to stay up to date on project management methodologies, game development and quality assurance workflows and techniques to hone your skills. In addition to that, you actively seek the kind of feedback that you need to constantly become better at everything you do. What sets you apart is your ability tap into these personal growth-experiences to coach your team effectively and empathically.

You have at least 5 years of experience in project management and have facilitated the successful conclusion of several game projects, at least one of them on a current generation console platform. This feeds into your ability to question and guide the production team. We are all about helping people actualize their ambitions and as a senior, you understand your role in supporting and guiding others.

When situations call for it, you are both a confident leader and a humble team player. This ideal informs your actions during personnel responsibility, such as participating in the hiring process, having frequent appraisal talks with your reports who include producers, QA managers and other supporting roles.

Unless there is an unprecedented global virus pandemic, you enjoy traveling and meeting people.

Even though English is our official language, informal office conversation will sometimes happen in German. People will readily switch to English if you can’t follow. Communication with external partners is almost exclusively English.

Challenges

Working in a varied and dynamic environment, it is tough to properly convey in general terms what your job will be like. Therefore, we’d like to give you a couple of examples of situations you may encounter. Think about what’s the challenge in each, how they make you feel, how you’d deal with them swiftly or how you’d need to grow in order to handle them competently.

• Certain people and their roles are shared between many projects. Think about the conflicts that may arise and mitigations for them.
• Workflows involving external vendors such as contacting, ordering, feedback and approval have grown over time and are different on every project. Company management would like to clear up and unify them.
• Some projects inevitably end up being perceived “way cooler” than others. This affects team morale.
• A colleague is reluctant to delegate responsibility. You get the feeling they can’t keep going under the resulting workload.

Game development is a collaborative process. If you want to solve these challenges with us, we must be able to have honest, if sometimes difficult conversations about them. What’s your approach? What questions do we need to answer together? How do we go about getting those answers? Let’s have a chat and see how we can make this work!

Compensation & perks

If you have three years of relevant professional experience, you can look forward to an annual gross salary of EUR 75'600,--. If you have fewer, more or other additional qualifications, an adjustment can be negotiated.

This covers 38.5 hours a week at around 44 weeks per year, when bank holidays and your mandatory vacation (see below) are taken into account.

On top of your salary, we offer the following perks:

• Spend one paid day per month on personal training and learning
• Paid overtime (no all-inclusive contracts)
• 25 days of paid vacation (20 days for part-time arrangements, guaranteed by labor law)
• Around ten public holidays per year
• Flexible working hours (core office hours 10:00h-16:00h)
• Liberal remote-office policy
• Monthly get-togethers with free drinks
• German language classes
• Free coffee, tea, soda and fruit