3 Online Director jobs in the United Kingdom

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

Requirements

The skills you’ll need:

• Advanced knowledge of C++ including high-performance programming.

• An advanced understanding of several specialist area of game development – for example Gameplay/UX (user experience), Animation, Networking, UI (user interface), Tools, AI (artificial intelligence).

• A baseline comprehension of many other specialist areas of game development, sufficient to plan projects and system interoperability.
• A thorough understanding of Unreal Engine’s C++ extensions, game framework and blueprint scripting.
• Knowledge of Unreal Engine’s project structure, settings, cook/build systems, and plugin architecture.
• Ability to debug the most complex issues with real-time 3D applications, both at a code level and using visual tools.
• Fluent in applying 3D math principles to real-time programming – matrices, quaternions, vectors etc.
• Ability to profile/optimise code to improve performance.
• Good English communication skills with an ability to communicate complex technical information to non-technical staff.
• Awareness of their own management style, techniques for managing performance, coaching and mentoring.

Experience required:

• Programming in the games industry in a professional context, working on at least three titles that are released on a current-generation console, PC, VR (Virtual Reality) headset or mobile.
• Personal responsibility for the technical design, implementation and maintenance of entire game projects, or areas of a large project that required multiple staff to implement.
• A leadership role on at least one Unreal Engine 4 or 5 project.
• Line-management and recruitment of technical staff.
• Planning, roadmapping and reporting progress on technical features for high-quality game projects.

Behaviours and qualities required:

• Pragmatism and supportive leadership. You can support a diverse workforce to sustainably deliver their best work, even under challenging circumstances.
• Team-focussed. You work toward the best result for the team and business, delegating to or supporting others with their work as appropriate.
• Cross-discipline mentality. At Elevation, code is not a siloed discipline, but programmers instead work with design, art, production etc. to empower one another and achieve shared goals. You would be an exemplar and evangelist of this approach.
• Manages workload efficiently and sustainably, for yourself and others. You continuously reassess priorities to ensure urgent tasks are tackled promptly and important tasks aren’t neglected. You manage bandwidth concerns to avoid burn-out or underutilisation.
• Calm under pressure. You can stay optimistic and professional as project circumstances change, remaining consistent and approachable to the wider team.
• Enthusiasm for VR as a technology and industry. You know what makes a great VR game and hold a vision for the future of the medium. You can act as a guardian and evangelist of VR sensibilities, possibilities, and platform innovation.

Benefits

We are nDreams – we develop and publish the world’s most immersive VR games. You may know us as the team behind Ghostbusters: Rise of the Ghost Lord, Synapse, Phantom: Covert Ops, Fracked, and the recently released FRENZIES. With humble beginnings as an independent studio, we combine amazing projects and considerable scale with a personal, caring touch.  

We believe the best workplaces and games are created by diverse, happy and safe teams. We're committed to building a culture centred on respect, wellbeing and balance. It's crucial we make our games and industry more accessible to underrepresented communities. We strive to live this through the people we hire, the experiences we create and the causes we support. 

We want everyone to have the opportunity to bring their best, authentic self to work. Please let us know if you require reasonable adjustments during the interview process by emailing or speaking to your nDreams recruiter. For more information about reasonable adjustments, check out this guidance from Scope.   

We offer great perks, including flexible hours, duvets days, your birthday off, dedicated personal development time and support, as well as regular socials. Beyond this, there’s an excellent holiday offering, pension scheme, health insurance, life cover and much more.  

What we are looking for:

Escape Velocity Entertainment is looking for a Game Director to champion and lead the mobile player experience for our unannounced cross-platform title. Our goal is to ensure quality and parity across all platforms, but we recognize that mobile platforms require focus and depth of knowledge, and therefore are seeking a developer who can live and breathe the mobile experience. This person will partner with other senior leaders to define product excellence, collaborate on the creative vision of the game, and ensure the unique needs of mobile players are met. The Mobile Game Director will evangelize the game vision and the mobile requirements both internally and externally.

Requirements

What we will do together:

• Visionary partnership and leadership.
• Working with the Game Director and Discipline Directors, you will cultivate and carry the full vision of the game and franchise into the mobile players’ experience.
• Collaborate with internal and co-dev partners across all disciplines to ensure that the vision translates into a creative and technical framework that delights and honours mobile players’ time and effort.
• Strategic collaboration and foresight.
• With Product and Production leaders, you will define and refine the roadmap to bring the game to mobile devices.
• Collaborate with the franchise GM to understand and reach the broadest player base possible, without compromising the creative integrity of the game.
• Help shape healthy and respectful retention and monetization approaches that are fair and valuable to a worldwide player base and to our business.
• Thoughtful and Reliable Development Excellence.
• Know what matters most, why it matters, and help everyone to rally and focus on delivering it to our players.
• Provide inspiring leadership to all developers as an excellent and enthusiastic communicator, instilling confidence within development.
• Partner with Production to craft and sustain a scalable and empowering development environment that provides achievable and repeatable results. 
• Player-First, Data-Informed Decision Making.
• With QA professionals, ensure our testing approaches are effective in helping our developers to deliver excellent software to our players.
• With Community and Marketing partners, help shape the game’s perception with the player base around the World.
• Partner with Product and Data experts to understand player behavior and drive the evolution of the game over time.

What you will bring:

• Shipped at least one AAA mobile title in a Director or Lead role.
• At least 10 years in the game industry, with at least 5 in leadership roles.
• Deep understanding of the needs of mobile players and how they intersect with, yet remain different from, those of PC and console players.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills that convey authenticity and expertise.
• A natural interest in industry trends, the ability to be a thought leader.
• A deep passion for games, and what it takes to make them.

Benefits

Interested… a bit about Escape Velocity:

Escape Velocity is a team of passionate, talented developers working at a studio that offers excellent benefits, on what we believe is a unique project with a committed publisher. But that doesn’t necessarily make us unique. What does make us special? We value the time, energy, and talent of our players and our colleagues. We want every hour spent developing and playing our games to be an incredibly rewarding and worthwhile use of your time.

To that end, we are ‘Fully Remote’ and support team members nearly anywhere in the world. We prioritize honesty, even when that means sharing bad news. We strive to give everyone autonomy so they can determine how best to work and play, and we care more about what you bring to the game and studio than how many hours you’re clocking. We’re dedicated to building a culture of play, which not only makes us better game makers, but also strengthens the bonds between us all. We believe in constant improvement across all areas – from the game itself to our production design – and are constantly re-evaluating how we spend our time to ensure that we’re not wasting yours and we’re all always working on the most important things. 

A few benefits you can expect from us:

• A generous PTO allowance.
• Summer and Winter holidays studio closure (separate to PTO allowance).
• Private Medical & Dental Healthcare. 
• Private Mental Health scheme.
• A generous annual Health & Wellbeing allowance.
• Discretionary Studio Bonus.
• Top range tech for your home set up.
• Other benefits based on your region.

How to apply:

Click apply and complete an application along with a Resume / CV. If we would like to move forward with your application, a member of the Recruiting Team will reach out to you and guide you through our process.

Escape Velocity is proud to be an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to hiring, promoting, and compensating employees based on their qualifications and demonstrated ability to perform job responsibilities.

Applications will be considered regardless of age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, belief, race, or any other protected category.