Lead Project Manager, Game Development

THERE IS A STRONG PREFERENCE FOR THE PERSON FILLING THIS ROLE TO SIT IN-STUDIO IN BEND, OR.

Lead Project Manager 

Sony Bend Studio, world-class creator of Days Gone, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, and Syphon Filter, is seeking outstanding talent to join our passionate and creative family in crafting our next high-profile AAA title.

The Lead Project Manager will operate in an extensive leadership role with the studio, responsible for coordinating activities in a Scaled Agile environment, working with multiple stakeholders, product owners, craft leads, producers, and cross-discipline Scrum Teams to develop potentially shippable product increments/deliverables each sprint. 

Responsibilities

Project Management:

• Lead others across all levels of the studio with the implementation of Scrum and other key Agile systems for an effective delivery of the project, including Milestone, Release, & Sprint Planning.  

• Plan and track release schedules against the defined live roadmap. 

• Help ensure cross discipline team communication, alignment, collaboration, and execution of core features based on priorities and defined deliverables. 

• Manage project scope based on current team velocities and milestone schedules. 

• Key role in identifying studio development risks and creating on-going mitigation strategies to address them. 

Agile Coaching: 

• Lead our agile strategy and processes in alignment with our studio goals, the specific needs of our teams, and key phases of development (pre-production, production, live services). 

• Foster collaboration and mentor others on the implementation of Scrum for an effective delivery of the project, including Milestone, Release, & Sprint Planning. 

• Train and coach our studio leadership, development teams and individuals on agile methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban; tailoring the approach to best fit our environment, including the creation of internal agile training and reference materials such as documentation and videos. 

• Foster a culture of continuous improvement; encouraging teams to inspect and adapt their methods to optimize efficiency and product quality. 

• Act as a change agent to resolve conflicts, remove obstacles, and champion the adoption of agile methodologies throughout the organization. 

• Lead in the creation of development systems and tools for analyzing, measuring, and reporting our development throughput, with the goal of improving our overall efficacy. Measure and report on the progress and success of our studio’s agile transformation, adjusting strategies, as necessary. 

• Refine our supporting production tools such as Jira to better support our agile processes. 

• Act as the studio’s Chief Scrum Master, helping all teams within the organization adhere to agile principles and work to improve our processes over time.  

Requirements: 

• Proven experience (5+ years) in project management within the gaming industry, a deep understanding of game development cycles, processes, and latest trends with an emphasis on live operations.  

• Considerable experience (5+ years) leading game development teams and game development groups. 

• Deep knowledge of various agile methodologies, including Scrum and Kanban and scaling these over large teams. 

• Significant experience with coaching teams in agile development and methodologies. 

• Familiarity with different project management tools and methodologies (e.g. Jira, Trello), with a focus on Agile/Scrum/Kanban. 

• Exceptional leadership, team management, communication, and problem-solving with strong interpersonal skills. 

• Hands-on game development experience in leadership roles shipping AAA live service games. 

• Experience in a leadership role dealing with change management at an organizational level and managing cross-functional and remote teams. 

Additional / Plus:

• Experience redefining “AAA” game development studios from waterfall to agile development and production in a hands-on leadership role. 

• Experience redefining studios from traditional “boxed product” focused game development into live service development studios in a key leadership role. 

• Scrum Master and Product Owner training/certification. 

• Technical, database, and customization knowledge and experience in working with Jira software for agile development. 

• Experience utilizing data and data visualization to create a development methodology based on data-informed decision making. 

#LI-DL2