TECHNICAL DIRECTOR

Job Title: Technical Director

Type: Full time

Who We Are: Disbelief is a game development studio focusing on contracting and consulting services. We’ve worked with both AAA and independent studios to help their projects ship. Notable projects we’ve worked on include Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Minecraft, Borderlands 3, Gears Tactics, Gears 5, and Pacific Drive.

At Disbelief we value work-life balance, and want to create an alternative to the crunch-culture prevalent in game development. We also believe strongly in investing in our talent and our team. Disbelief is a place to puzzle out the solutions to cutting-edge problems in graphics and engine programming, but also a place where people can grow their careers and skill sets as valued members of a stable and close knit team.

Description: Currently, we’re looking for a Technical Director. This opportunity is for a full-time position in Cambridge, MA or Chicago, IL.

Technical Directors at Disbelief are versatile, self-driven and accomplished individuals with track records of technical contributions to multiple games. Apart from being highly skilled technical contributors, they have a keen understanding of our customers’ needs and the ability to translate those needs into concrete direction. Technical Directors are leaders, mentors and role models for engineers within the company; they model our ideal engineer and guide others to succeed. They are comfortable giving direction on cutting-edge projects and when working on new technologies. Technical Directors quickly identify and solve technical problems. They understand how our business works, what our customers want, what drives our reputation, what’s possible technically, and what will take Disbelief to the next level.

We believe a diverse team is a stronger team, and we encourage marginalized programmers to apply.

Key Responsibilities:

• Understand big-picture objectives from customers, and use that to focus development.
• Uphold technical quality, especially before code or documentation goes out the door to customers.
• Act as primary technical representative on large/important projects.
• Plan and estimate technical aspects of large projects.
• Anticipate technical risks and formulate plans to navigate them.
• Parachute in to provide technical guidance on multiple projects.
• Mentor engineers of all levels, including leads.
• Evangelize and teach Disbelief’s development philosophy.
• Work occasionally as an individual contributor on areas of strategic importance.
• Work with the President and CTO to evolve company-wide technical standards.
• Contribute to strategy at company level.
• Act as an ambassador for the company in sales, recruiting and public forums.

Skills and Requirements:

• BA/BS or MS Degree in Computer Science, or equivalent experience
• Advanced communication and diplomacy skills.
• 10 years of experience writing C++ on AAA game teams.
• At least one shipped AAA Unreal Engine title in a lead role.
• Deep understanding of Unreal Engine architecture.
• Excellent time management skills.
• Ability to balance competing priorities.
• Broad experience in multiple areas of development.
• Track record as an excellent individual contributor.
• Proven ability to quickly read and understand large game and engine code bases.

Location: Cambridge, MA or Chicago, IL

Relocation Assistance: Available where applicable

Remote: Hybrid. Technical Directors are in the office based on project needs, but can often work from home. Some of our projects require access to physical infrastructure daily.

Visa Sponsorship: No. Disbelief does not offer visa sponsorship at the current time.

We are an E-Verify employer.

Technologies: Most of our work is C++ of varying standards with a sprinkling of other languages as needed for tooling. We do a lot of graphics programming work, using shader languages and platform graphics APIs. Since we often are debugging the lower levels of systems, being able to read x64 or ARM assembly is useful. Primarily we work with Unreal Engine, but we also work with custom game engines. Our work uses rendering, physics, audio, VR, AR, and other APIs frequently. Our primary platforms are PC, Xbox consoles, Playstation consoles, Switch, and VR/AR devices.

Contact: jobs@disbelief.com