Technical Director - Studio Elevation (Remote within the UK)

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

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.

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 interviewing@ndreams.com 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.