Development Director (Contract)

At Kabam, we’re constantly raising the bar of excellence in free-to-play gaming. We hire for passion and diversity so that we can triumph in our collective skill. Our teams are made up of a fusion of personalities and interests bound together by a collaborative nature, fun-loving culture, and a drive to do what it takes to make great games. And this is where you come in…

We are looking for a contract Development Director to support a new project through to launch, keeping the project schedule and helps move the development team from one project phase to the next while ensuring collaboration and communication both on the immediate team and with other partner teams within the studio. A Development Director manages a variety of disciplines including artists, designers, software engineers, QA and other production staff. Reporting to the Executive Producer, you will partner with team members to ensure that they are managing the project on time, to quality, and within budget. This contract is expected to last at minimum 4 months, with possibility of extension.

Throughout this contract, you can expect to:

 
• Partners with Senior Production team members to maintain planning and execution momentum for a live game during the contract term.
• Provides day-to-day guidance to project team members on process and priorities; flags improvement opportunities to the permanent team rather than driving studio-wide initiatives.
• Collaborates with project stakeholders to maintain schedules and resource plans against existing project goals.
• Identifies dependencies and priorities between tasks in partnership with the project teams.
• Monitors project progress within assigned budgets and managing any changes that impact the overall project schedule, budget and resources along with proper communication.
• Confirms the team has access to needed training resources and best practices; but does not own long-term development planning
• Supports an environment where staff understand how their daily work contributes to the company’s goals in motion.
• Solves problems, balancing priorities, and finding creative solutions to achieve results.
• Assigns task goals from defined project goals; achieve project deliverables through managing a team at a project-level.
• Tracks and manages scope in alignment with capacity, identifying and mitigating risks for assigned scope as needed.
• Partners with team leads to manage and balance scope, ensuring timeline and quality targets are met.

To be successful in this role, your background includes:

• Bachelor’s degree in related field or certification in project management, with a focus on Agile methodologies.
• 7+ years of project management experience in entertainment and/or software development industry.
• Mobile game development experience.
• Working knowledge of JIRA and resource management tools (tracking, modeling, allocation).
• Deep understanding of games as a service business model.
• Knowledge of JIRA and other PM tools.
• Effective communication skills with the proven ability to work with stakeholders across all levels of organization.
• Comfortable with ambiguity and constant change, yet able to set priorities and execute commitments.