{"id":3816308,"url":"https://alion.io/job/kinetic-games-technical-director","title":"Technical Director","company":{"id":680441,"name":"Kinetic Games","domain":"kineticgames.co.uk","url":"https://alion.io/company/kineticgames","size_band":"1-10","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Rippling","truth_index":null},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"head","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Southampton, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":true,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Unity","optional":true},{"name":"Unreal Engine","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-05T15:15:35Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-05","last_verified_at":"2026-11-08T01:06:59Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":2,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":2},"description":"About Kinetic Games\nWe’re an independent games studio best known for creating Phasmophobia, enjoyed by millions of players worldwide. Our team is passionate, creative, and collaborative and we’re looking for someone equally enthusiastic about games to join our growing team.\nWe’re a small but fast growing, friendly team that values creativity, openness, and personal growth. Whether you’re helping various departments or talking about your favourite horror game, you’ll be part of a supportive environment where passion and curiosity are celebrated. You’ll be joining a small but ambitious team where your ideas are valued, your growth is supported, and your development truly matters.\nDiversity, equity, and inclusion are important to how we work together every day. We aim to build a team with diverse experiences, perspectives, and backgrounds. We believe great games start with an inclusive environment where everyone can contribute, grow, and succeed. Applications from all qualified candidates are encouraged. Equal opportunities are provided throughout our recruitment and employment practices.\nIf you require any reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know. We'll work with you to understand your needs and provide appropriate support wherever reasonably practicable.\nAbout the role:\nAs Technical Director, you will own the studio-wide technical direction at Kinetic Games, working closely with the Game Director, Development Director, Programming Leads and other discipline leadership.\nYou will provide technical oversight across projects, ensure engineering teams are set up to succeed, identify and manage technical risks, and help establish the standards and practices required as the studio continues to scale.\nThis is not purely an architectural or advisory position. We are looking for someone who remains technically credible and actively engaged with development, able to investigate difficult problems, review technical solutions and provide practical guidance when teams need support.\nYou will also play an important role in shaping our longer-term technology strategy, including evaluating engines, platforms, tools and development practices for Phasmophobia.\nYour responsibilities will include:\nDefine and maintain the studio's overall technical vision and strategy.\nProvide technical leadership to ensure projects have appropriate architecture, engineering standards and technical plans.\nProvide oversight of major technical decisions and ensure solutions support long-term maintainability and scalability.\nIdentify technical risks early and work with teams to resolve them before they impact development.\nMaintain a strong understanding of the technical health of Phasmophobia.\nEstablish engineering standards, development practices and technical review processes.\nReview and challenge major architectural decisions where appropriate.\nSupport Programming Leads and senior engineers with complex technical problems.\nEnsure performance, stability, networking, platform requirements and scalability are considered throughout development.\nWork across disciplines to resolve technical dependencies and ensure technology supports design, art, audio, QA and production requirements.\nPartner with Production and Development leadership when making decisions around scope, technical investment and delivery.\nHelp determine when technical debt should be addressed and ensure it does not create unacceptable long-term risk.\nEvaluate new technologies, engines, middleware, tools and workflows where they could improve development.\nHelp define the technical direction of future Kinetic Games projects.\nContribute to engineering recruitment, team structure and workforce planning.\nHelp develop Programming Leads while building a strong engineering culture across the studio.\nEnsure strong security and best practices are used for back-end multiplayer services.\nRequirements:\nSignificant professional game development experience, including experience in a senior technical leadership role.\nExperience shipping commercially released games on PC and console.\nStrong hands-on programming and software engineering knowledge.\nStrong understanding of modern game architecture and development pipelines.\nStrong knowledge of areas such as performance, memory, rendering, networking, build systems, tools and platform development.\nAbility to understand unfamiliar technical systems quickly and challenge technical decisions constructively.\nExperience providing technical direction across multiple teams or large multidisciplinary projects.\nExperience working effectively with Programming Leads, Principal Engineers and other senior technical staff.\nStrong understanding of the relationship between engineering decisions, production constraints and game quality.\nAbility to communicate complex technical issues clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.\nComfortable making difficult technical decisions and taking accountability for their outcomes.\nDesirable Experience\nExperience working on multiplayer and live service games.\nExperience supporting a successful live game.\nExperience developing games across PC and current generation consoles (PlayStation, Xbox or Nintendo platforms).\nExperience with Unity and/or Unreal Engine.\nBenefits & Perks\nComprehensive Reward Package\nEnhancedEmployer Match Pension Scheme\nAnnual Bonus\nWeekly Free Team Lunches\nRegular Social Events\nHybrid & Flextime Working\nAccess to Southampton Football Club Tickets - subject to availability and sponsor allocation\nRelocation Package (within the UK only)\nElectric Vehicle Car Scheme\nEmployee of the Month Vouchers\nPersonal Wellbeing Allowance\nRecruitmentReferral Scheme\nTraining & Development Budget\nTraining & Career Development\nVitality Health Insurance\nAviva Life Insurance\n30 days Holiday in Total\nChristmas Studio Shutdown","description_format":"text","description_chars":5849,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Health insurance","Life insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["PC Games","Game Development"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-05T16:11:10Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":1,"expected_fill_days":29,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-07T05:47:08Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/kinetic-games-technical-director","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/kinetic-games-technical-director.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-08T02:17:51Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":4973,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-09T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":680441},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=680441"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fkinetic-games-technical-director"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fkinetic-games-technical-director"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fkinetic-games-technical-director"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/kinetic-games-technical-director\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fkinetic-games-technical-director"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3816308}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"kineticgames.co.uk","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3816308},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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