Senior Project Manager XDev

Insomniac Games is looking for a Senior Project Manager XDev. In this role, the Senior Project Manager XDev will be responsible for ensuring Insomniac ships titles on time, within External Development (XDev) budgets, and at the highest level of excellence through planning, problem solving, and decision making. Creates, modifies, and enforces project schedules with XDev Partners and Project teams. Works with team members to achieve project milestones, solve XDev production problems, and maintain studio momentum. Anticipate and solve problems independently and collaboratively. Collaborates with XDev Manager, Project Managers, and project leadership.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Responsible for the creation, modification, and execution of macro schedules for assigned content to External Partners and Contractors. Ensures all deadlines are met in relation to project objectives and scope. Anticipates scheduling overruns and initiates actions to resolve them.
• Assists XDev Manager in the creation of milestone deliverables, collaborating with project leadership, and Project Managers to coordinate goals across diverse disciplines to project completion.
• Ensures regular communication between the XDev Artists, XDev Manager and production team updating project status and changes.
• Drives efficiency for XDev asset deliveries and project management with External Partner, Internal XDev artists and team leads. Resolves resource and technology conflicts. Ensures organizational cohesiveness toward project objectives in conjunction with production leadership.
• Works alongside the XDev Manager to create, institute, and evangelize new XDev documentation, best practices and makes sure briefs are complete for External Partners to align with Project and milestone objectives.
• Proactively ensures XDev project updates and changes are communicated to the Production team.
• Is familiar and knowledgeable of art tools and best practices for all art departments including Character, Environment, VFX, Lighting, Vehicles, Animation and Facial Animation pipelines
• Develops collaborative relationships across all departments in order to solves problems independently and collaboratively.
• Other duties may be assigned.

Experience and Education

• Seven plus years of professional experience or training, or an equivalent amount of education and experience.
• Proven experience in project management for video game development
• Proven experience in project management working with external developers
• Worked closely with internal teams to identify and prepare external development briefing materials
• Worked closely with external vendors to assess, track, and follow through on the creation of game content or assets
• Understanding of pipeline and dependencies of a cross-discipline pod and how they impact each other
• Can present clear and open communication regarding progress, deadlines, and known issues to Leadership

Skills/Ability

• • Strong analytical, organizational, and problem-solving skills
• • Excellent communication and interpersonal abilities
• • Proficiency in project management software and methodologies
• • Ability to define problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions. Ability to interpret an extensive variety of technical instructions in mathematical or diagram form and deal with several abstract and concrete variables.
• • Responsible for maintaining the schedule and structure of a project and keeping team members accountable for the project’s timeline and deadlines
• • Computer Skills: Knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite. Working knowledge of bug tracking database(s) is required- DevTrack, TFS, Jira or other industry standard. Working knowledge of Shotgun/Shotgrid/Flow.

Other Skills:

• Solves problems both independently and collaboratively and adheres to the studio’s expectations of cultural leadership.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills required.
• Must be able to present ideas clearly and work well within a large team environment.
• Must be a good team leader and be able to make informed decisions to achieve desired results.
• Ability to create and maintain good relationships with other departments.