Director Of Studio Operations

Filament Games is a 50-person studio that focuses on creating educational games and has been making our mark in this space for just shy of 20 years. Our present Director of Studio Operations, who has been with Filament for 10 years, is graduating to a step up at another studio. This means Filament is looking for someone that is ready to comfortably step into their shoes and then work on the studio to make it even better.

This role would be great for someone that is passionate about leading great teams and wants the opportunity to do that at a studio where they can easily get traction on taking calculated risks and experimenting in an environment with high psychological safety. This role reports directly to Filament's CTO and has 6 direct reports and 6 additional indirect reports.

Note: Thanks to technology, a cover letter is not expected. Fully answering the application questions acts as your cover letter.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the strategy for staffing and maintaining effective development teams with the assistance of discipline managers.

• Oversee the preparation of project budgets and production plans in collaboration with the business development team and with the assistance of your producers.

• Maintain and iterate on our baseline development process and division of labor, including onboarding and training aids.

• Manage the smooth operation of the A/V and QA departments with the aid of your producers and discipline leads.

• Maintain and grow a stable of effective game producers.

• Provide regular actionable reports on project progress and health to upper management.

• Maintain the process for accurate accounting and billing of projects in collaboration with the accounting department.

• Prepare your teams to deal with the unexpected by planning ahead and managing risk.

Required Skills and Experience

• Excellent written and verbal English

• Polished presentation skills

• Polished employee relations skills

• Experience coaching development teams

• Strong understanding of common game development processes and divisions of labor

• Knowledge of common HR dos and don'ts

• Spreadsheet ninja

• Experience building project budgets, allocating resources, and reporting out project health

• Expertise with microsoft project, smartsheet, or similar scheduling tool

• Hands on expertise with a digital scrum task tracker such as Jira, Pivotal, Rally, Target Process, etc.

Typical Background

• 12 years of experience within games or ed tech industries

• Held diverse roles. For example: QA manager and Account Executive, or Software Engineer and Producer

• Recently had 3-5 direct reports

• Active participant in one or more relevant industry groups

Extra Credit

• Previous employment in the educational game industry

• Previous teaching experience

• QA experience

• Executive production, sales, or account management experience

• Experience collaborating with web development or devops teams

About Filament Games

Watch our Who We Are video.

Our team is a creative, interdisciplinary group of people who are making a difference. Through innovative educational games we’re working to modernize education and revolutionize learning!

We believe that the best work – and the best life – comes from a healthy balance between work and play, discipline, and fun. Our office culture reflects this. 

Our office is located in the heart of downtown Madison, a lively city with a world-class university, burgeoning tech industry and beautiful state capitol. Downtown Madison is a vibrant, active urban center with fun weekly events like Concert on the Square and the Farmer’s Market, and offers access to a variety of eclectic restaurants, music venues, and the best of Madison’s nightlife.

Filament offers a competitive benefits package, including health/dental/vision care, short & long term disability, a Flexible Spending Account, 401k retirement plan, subsidized bus fare, profit sharing, and unlimited paid time off.

Guard against scams: During the selection process, applicants will only receive official notices via email from a sender from the @filamentgames.com or @app.bamboohr.com domains. This includes scheduling interviews and coordinating reference checks, assessments, and job offers. If the person who is contacting you is not listed on the staff page on our website please do not correspond with them. Unfortunately Filament will not be able to assist you if you fall victim to a job offer scam. Please report any losses to law enforcement.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. Applicants will be considered for positions on the basis of qualifications and ability to perform the job for which they are applying without regard to race, religion, creed, sex, age, residency, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, or physical appearance. Minorities are encouraged to apply.