Technical Director

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…

The key function of the Technical Director is to lead and manage the engineering team. They direct, oversee, and communicate project engineering efforts while collaborating for feedback with game stakeholders.

This role is a full-time, on-site position based 5 days a week at our Downtown Vancouver studio.

In this role, you can expect to:

Key Accountabilities

Manage Engineering Team:

• Oversee the recruitment, onboarding, and performance management of the engineering team.
• Provide guidance, mentorship, and support to engineers, ensuring their professional growth and development.
• Foster a collaborative and productive team environment.

Communication and Project Updates:

• Regularly communicate updates regarding project engineering efforts to stakeholders, including the game client/server technology, development roadmap, and live operation of cross-platform products.
• Keep stakeholders informed about technical progress, challenges, and solutions.

Technical Design and Development:

• Lead and manage the technical design and development of game software, ensuring that the design and architecture are extensible across projects.
• Collaborate with key stakeholders to contribute directly to the design of major game features, technology budgeting, scheduling, and whole-project dependency analysis.

Development Bottleneck Identification and Coordination:

• Proactively identify development bottlenecks across all areas, disciplines, and projects.
• Coordinate with teams and stakeholders to find and implement solutions to overcome these bottlenecks, ensuring smooth development processes.

Technical Debt Management:

• Understand and manage technical debts within the project, prioritizing and addressing them where they can increase efficiency.
• Collaborate with teams to identify and mitigate technical debt risks, ensuring a sustainable and maintainable codebase.

To be successful in this role, your background includes:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
• Experience leading technical development in the mobile/video games space and have shipped at least 2 large scale game titles.
• 10+ years of progressive experience in a similar capacity including 5+ years in a technical leadership role, preferably in the game industry.
• Experience with game engine(s): Unity3D, Unreal, Frostbite, or others.
• A people manager who has experience in developing team members’ career advancement.
• Knowledgeable and approachable with demonstrated ability to drive to clear action and ownership.
• Experience building and running highly scalable applications.

  Game development experience on any platform (Mobile, iOS, Android, PC, Consoles).

  Knowledge in how to deal with platform/device-specific issues.

  A problem-solver who can also implement the solutions.

Our success is due to the hard work of our people. We share our success with our people through flexible benefits and reward programs, sweet swag, snacks, and more. Here’s a look at some of the support we provide our people:

• Extended Health Coverage: effective day one, no waiting period! Our benefits cover health, dental, life, disability, and extended paramedical services such as vision care, mental health practitioners, massage, physiotherapy, acupuncture, and much more.
• DEIB Benefits: DEIB is important to us and to our people - that’s why our benefits include gender-affirming care, fertility care, and other hormonal treatments and drugs.
• Flexible Spending Accounts: our benefits are built on a flex credit model, so you’re able to choose the coverage levels that are right for you, and allocate the rest to a group RRSP/TFSA, Health Spending account, and/or Personal Spending Account.
• RRSP Matching: everyone retires eventually, and we help our people save for their futures with a contribution matching program once you reach 90 days with us.
• Commuter Benefit: we believe in the power of in-person collaboration, and want to support you in making it work for you! We provide a flexible, monthly cash allowance to help cover the costs of transit, parking, or even personal logistics like childcare and pet care.
• PTO and Parental Leave: we offer paid parental leave, flexible paid time off, paid time off for volunteering, sick leave, and holiday closures.
• Employee and Family Assistance Program: t his program provides crisis management support, immediate mental health care, and generalized support for emotional, mental, and financial well-being.
• Telus Virtual Health: we provide increased access to remote healthcare providers for prescription refills or referrals from the comfort of your home.
• Learning and growth: We encourage people to grow both personally and professionally, and support this through regular lunch & learns and an education stipend.
• Pay transparency: We share with employees the pay range their role falls within and clear career maps to determine how they can grow within their role or level-up to a promotion.
• Cool spaces: Our offices are in Vancouver, Montreal, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Whether it’s summers on the rooftop patio in Downtown Vancouver, or watching the fireworks in Montreal’s South Shore - we want our people to feel like their time spent in office is worthwhile!
• Giving back: Kabammers have a dedicated paid day off every year to volunteer to a cause close to their hearts. Some teams even band together for group volunteer days off-site!