Engineering Director

Founded by Bad Robot (Lost, Cloverfield, Westworld, Star Wars, Star Trek), we at Bad Robot Games are on a mission to continually reinvent how stories are played.

We are a remote-first games company represented by a diverse team, which empowers us to make the kinds of games in which all players can see themselves. Working closely with our colleagues at Bad Robot Productions, our projects unite our extensive network of games, TV, and film industry talent to create original IPs, expansive worlds and tell new stories across all media platforms which are as fun to watch as they are to play.
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Bad Robot Games is seeking an Engineering Director who leads and supports a high caliber team of talented engineers in the development and delivery of a 4 player co-op game. In this role, you will be responsible for assigning engineers to cross-functional pods, aligning them on key areas of the game, and maintaining a culture of engineering excellence.

As an Engineering Director, you will provide technical leadership, coaching, and career development, while fostering a collaborative, high-performing culture. You will raise the bar across engineering and empower teams to ship reliable, scalable systems and deliver a polished player experience that meets both creative and technical goals.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead our entire engineering organization of 15+, and manage individual contributors, leads, and other managers across experience levels, providing coaching, feedback, performance management, and career development.

• Serve as the senior engineering voice in studio level leadership discussions, contributing to strategic planning, resourcing decisions, and milestone reviews alongside other directors and producers.

• Foster a collaborative, challenging, and satisfying environment for your development team members. Find and surface issues, risks, and opportunities, and address them head-on. Celebrate wins.

• Partner with production, pod owners, and studio leadership to deliver sprints and milestones on time and at quality.

• Allocate engineering resources across pods to best match skills, knowledge, and project needs.

• Empower engineers with the tools, context, and cross-studio support required to execute effectively.

• Represent the engineering organization by surfacing concerns, proposing solutions, and maintaining alignment while protecting technical integrity.

• Advise leadership on engineering systems, technology, and infrastructure, and identify and mitigate technical risks.

• Contribute hands on as needed to gameplay systems in Unreal Engine 5 (Blueprints and C++).

• Maintain strong stakeholder relationships and communicate regularly with pod leaders on delivery, resourcing, and performance.

• Build, maintain, and have the ability to scale the engineering organization partnering with recruiting and studio leadership on headcount planning, team structure, and long-term org health.

• Support critical milestones with urgency, including playtests, in-person events, and occasional travel.

• All of our roles require up to 10% air travel. Examples include Studio/Team Offsites, Team/Studio Events, etc.
  

KEY QUALIFICATIONS

• 15+ years of game development experience, including 8+ years in people management, with multiple shipped titles and at least one in a senior engineering leadership role at the studio or project level.

• Proven ability to lead, mentor, and grow engineering teams while delivering results.

• Experience with managing managers

• Deep expertise in at least one core engineering discipline (gameplay, systems, graphics, etc) within Unreal Engine 4 or 5.

• Strong communication, collaboration, and stakeholder-management skills across disciplines.

• Demonstrated ability to delegate effectively, manage competing priorities, and mitigate risk.

• Solid understanding of end-to-end game development pipelines and how engineering disciplines come together to ship a product.

• Experience working with outsourced engineering partners.

BONUSES

• Innate desire to drive innovation by staying current with industry trends, tools, and development methodologies.

• A history of developing strategies to improve team health, effectiveness, and long-term sustainability.

• Experience supporting outsource vendor relationships and external engineering partnerships.

Our ranges are based on California market rate regardless of work location in the US.

Find out more about our benefits and team on our careers page!

Bad Robot Games is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All persons will receive consideration for employment without regard to gender (including gender identity, gender expression and gender reassignment), race (including colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin), religion or belief, marital or civil partnership status, disability, age, sexual orientation, pregnancy or maternity, trade union membership or membership in any other legally protected category.

Bad Robot Games recruiters will never ask you for money or to provide financial information during our recruiting process. Scammers often request money transfers for Visa processing fees or travel expenses, as well as personal information including passport info, social security numbers, credit card or bank account information.Bad Robot Games recruiters will never use personal email (including @gmail) accounts when contacting candidates. We also do NOT interview or screen candidates over messenger or text-based chat. All communication will be tied to no-reply@ashbyhq.com or an email address tied to badrobotgames.com.