Over the last fifteen years we’ve entertained millions of players around the world with our award-winning games. From Burnout & Need for Speed to the critically acclaimed VR mission for Star Wars Battlefront, Criterion have always pushed the boundaries, delivering through technical excellence, world-class game feel and AAA audiovisual quality.
We place enormous value on creative collaboration, fresh ideas, and unique perspectives. Our studio is a healthy mix of industry veterans and newcomers working together to inspire, support, and educate one another. We encourage free experimentation, innovation and exploration very explicitly with regular “off-the-grid” time.
The working day has space carved out for everyone to play games – by themselves or together, be they tabletop or videogames, we love them all. Learning from the widest range of experiences makes our own games better.
Over the years, we’ve learned that crunching is flat-out stupid, so we don’t do it.
The Challenge Ahead
Criterion are embarking on their most ambitious projects to date.
We are growing our team with fresh, talented people who can help us take a huge leap forwards.
We are looking for someone to take a role as a project management lead in the studio, alongside our other Development Directors. Working together with the other project leaders, you will project manage the game features, and inspire, and influence the game team that they work with at Criterion.
You’ll be responsible for ensuring a project has credible project plans and the feature teams within the project are set up for success to deliver on them. In addition, you’ll be accountable for the development of the project to meet the delivery goals of budget, time and quality, via effective and efficient project management.
You Are Passionate About All The Following- Project Management and Shipping video games
- Applying, defining and implementing the right development process to suit the challenge
- Metrics, scope & capacity management and maintaining a credible plan
- Risk management, including presentation of analysis of consequences, timelines and cost estimates
- Working with teams across disciplines and crafts: engineering, art, QA, Localisation to name a few
- The way we create: not doing things just because that’s the way we’ve done them before, understanding change is a necessary part of success
- The people you work with: asking appropriate questions and being open to new solutions is key to you and the team’s development
- Generous collaboration: a desire and inherent need to work with others to achieve great things, develop ideas, plans and strategies
What a Project Manager Does At Criterion
As a project leader, you will set your own priorities in collaboration with your fellow team leaders but a typical week could include:- Championing the plan: collaborating with all Criterion talent to develop project plans and achieve success
- Developing a close relationship with the game Producer/s, Technical Director/s and Designer/s
- Partnering with team leaders and feature team craft groups to ensure the game is on track and all issues are in hand, highlighting scope issues and options to resolve
- Identifying, mitigating, highlighting, and tracking project risks
- Managing and tracking project budgets and expenditures in line with studio and project priorities
- Helping establish quality goals and metrics and executing against them
- Working with partners such as EA QA and Localisation groups to ensure deliverables are defined, delivered and approved.
- Coaching teams on project management processes: selecting most suitable process and most valuable metrics, communicating plans, challenges and tracking to the team
- Ensuring their project team/s are healthy and happy
Experience And Knowledge We Are Looking For
We are looking for someone who understands the challenges of making complex games with multi-disciplined, distributed teams and the inherent elements of uncertainty and risk that accompany this. Preparedness for this role is rooted in:- Prior experience as a delivery-focused game Project Manager or game Producer
- Ability to manage large project teams over development cycles of varied periods of time
- Solid understanding of project management practices and process including Scrum and Kanban
- Experience working with external partners to deliver on projects
Not Essential Requirements But Certainly Helpful Qualities And Skills- Experience working in media or creative industries such as film and TV
- Craft experience in game development as an artist, programmer etc.
- Advanced Excel skills (macros/pivot tables/graphing)
What’s in it for you? Glad you asked!
Naturally, we offer competitive compensation packages.
More importantly, because we love working with world-class creators, we maintain a culture that thrives on creative freedom and autonomy.
We Thought You Might Also Want To Know
We’re based in the lovely town of Guildford – 35 minutes from central London.
More about our studio: http://criteriongames.com/
More about our location: http://careers.ea.com/our-locations/guildford
