Technical Director

nDreams Studio Elevation are re-establishing the boundaries of VR. We’re looking for an exceptionally talented Technical Director to help us explore, create, and deliver world leading innovation in software and VR hardware. With our first title nearing release and a second in early planning stages, it’s a great time to join our fully remote, VR-first studio.

As Technical Director, you will be responsible for setting up the code team and studio for success. You’ll be structuring, directing and mentoring a diverse team of engineers capable of creating genre-leading titles. You will be driving high levels of quality through your team, and owning the implementation processes that empower, discover, and refine intuitive and aspirational experiences.

As well as representing and empowering the technology team, you’ll form an integral part of the product owning steering group; A collective that are responsible for the vision and delivering on the studio’s high level strategic goals.

The rundown:

• Permanent role
• Full time (37.5 hours per week)
• Fully Remote in the UK (with option to work in Farnborough or Brighton offices if desired)
• Competitive Salary and Benefits

Key responsibilities:

• Oversee technical implementation
• Own the overall architecture for a game project, including middleware, asset pipelines, tools, system interoperability, etc.
• Promote efficient development. Identify opportunities for code reuse. Engineer for straightforward reuse in future.
• Support an agile, fail fast methodology when discovering and exploring technical solutions.
• Balance product quality, performance and development resources.
• Plan and estimate effectively
• Evaluate product requirements, raise potential risks, and propose solutions.
• Influence high-level product roadmaps, setting suitable technical milestones and gates for development. Input to the studio resourcing plan.
• Own and communicate the technical approach for a studio, aligning it with the company-wide strategy.
• Direct technical priorities for the studio. Interleave company, studio and project-level priorities.
• Give feedback on and influence the business-wide technology strategy. Collaborate with the central Shared Technology group to ensure Elevation is contributing to and benefitting from company-wide development.
• Document and communicate information
• Ensure the quality and accuracy of technical documentation for each project and the studio.
• Communicate the architecture of game projects, describing how systems interact. Tailor information for technical or non-technical audiences.
• Work with the Code Manager to support an effective and scalable programming team
• Empower staff with appropriate context, achievable goals, and honest, timely feedback.
• Create scope for senior staff, delegating areas of responsibility and mitigating single points of failure.
• Manage and interleave processes and workflows across the studio. Identify blockers and inefficiencies in development and help to solve them.
• Encourage collaboration in the programming staff. Instil a truly cross-discipline mentality. Make time for them to exchange information and techniques with other studios and shared nDreams functions.
• Act as the hiring manager for technical staff. Conduct interviews, effectively evaluating technical and behavioural competencies. Check bias (self and others) and make balanced hiring decisions.
• Mentor Senior and Principal-level staff, helping to expand their scope and influence