Game Technical Director

Just 13 miles south of Manchester and a 15-minute train journey, is the attractive market town of Wilmslow. Here amongst the boutique shops and independent cafes and bars is the stunning Playdemic studio. Acquired by EA in 2021, Playdemic is home to the top 10 grossing, BAFTA-winning mobile smash – Golf Clash. Having opened at the beginning of 2020, our award-winning, bespoke studio space offers conventional desk space and indulgent breakout areas, meeting rooms and alternative workspaces. The office has been ridgeline-designed to create an environment that encourages and allows our team to do their very best work.

Reporting to the Head of Operations, Playdemic is looking for a Game Technical Director to join the management team overseeing the technical direction of our smash-hit Golf Clash. As the Game Technical Director, you will lead all technical aspects, including the technical design, DevOps and our technical teams including our engine, server and client teams to deliver high-quality features to millions of players.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technology strategy, development, iterations and live operations of Golf Clash by working with the GM, Tech Art, Art Director, Production, & Engineering team.
• Partner with engineering people managers to guide and nurture the growth of engineers in the team.
• Partner with the game's Technical Leadership group to define strategic goals and milestones, establish best practices, and promote the engineering team's core development values.
• Work with Production, Development Directors, and other disciplines leads to scope tasks and input requirements.
• Work with EA central teams to adopt shared technology and influence their roadmaps with Golf Clash’s needs.
• Partner with the commercial team to create and adjust technical decisions and roadmap priorities for the game, using your technical expertise to draw out not only the WHAT & WHEN, but the WHY for the roadmap.
• Provide technical mentorship and guidance to the engineering team.
• Be a hands-on participant in architecture/design for our hardest technical challenges.
• Review completed engineering deliverables before release.
• Collaborate with broader team partners (design, art, UI, and product) to ensure that engineering interests and values are represented and maintained through the course of development, and that features are being developed with Tech capabilities and performance limitations in mind.
• Manage to completion, risks and mitigations for the game systems and backend services on the project.
• Guide the hiring process for the game's engineering team by identifying skill gaps and work with talent acquisition and people managers to find and recruit candidates.
  
  

You have

• 10+ years of professional experience as a software engineer shipping games.
• 5+ years of experience leading a team of software engineers to develop and live service mobile or cross-platform games.
• Experience with large-scale software technical architecture and design using custom engines
• Knowledge of server and infrastructure technology
• Experience with performance analysis and code optimization.
• Experience collaborating with producers, artists, designers, product managers, project managers and other engineers.
• Experience with productive and critical conversations
• Experience with long-term career mentorship of software engineers with varying levels of experience.
• Experience with at least one major cloud infrastructure solution (e.g. Amazon, Azure, Google.)
  
  

Bonus

• Familiarity with the following technologies: Unity/AWS/Redis/Jenkins
• Expertise in iOS and Android platform development
• Prior experience with console/PC development
• Multiplayer technology service experience