Electronic Arts

Welcome to Maxis, home to tinkerers, craftspeople, & storytellers. Our drive is to inspire everyone to make a better world through creative play. As the developer of The Sims, we create games and experiences for millions of people around the world and are always looking for new ways to inspire our players. Maxis is a place where you can do what you love and help others grow while doing it; a place where your unique voice can be heard and seen. We put creativity and inclusivity at the core of our work and don't settle for seeing the world only as it is, but strive to build a world as it could be.

Location: Hybrid three days a week onsite the studio in Vancouver.

As a Technical Director for The Sims, you will lead architecture and tech decisions to deliver transformative and performance features to our players. You will work with an experienced team that has collectively built Sims games for more than two decades. You will work with multiple designers, producers, and client engineers architecting, reviewing and managing tech risks for features that expand the gameplay possibilities of The Sims.

You will be reporting to the Technical Director.

Responsibilities:

• Guide & review technology development on a Sims game, working with the lead architect and engineers internally and with our external development partner.

• Partner with the game's leadership to prioritize and execute on tech goals and milestones, establish best practices, and promote the core development values.

• Provide hands-on operational and technical coordination and guidance for Base game client/engine and DLC releases

• Serve as Technical oversight, guidance, and troubleshooting for ongoing Saas (Sims As A Service) Live Service feature releases.

• Provide technical oversight, guidance, and troubleshooting for end-to-end live service content pipeline: author, curate, build, publish, and distribute.

• Work with Production, Development Directors, external partners, and other disciplines leads to scope tasks and input requirements.

• Create and adjust technical decisions and roadmap priorities for the game including networking and online infrastructure, using your technical expertise to draw out not only the WHAT & WHEN, but the WHY for the roadmap.

• Provide technical mentorship and guidance to internal and external engineers.

• Review and approve Technical Design Documents for the complex systems.

• Be a hands-on participant in architecture/design for our hardest technical challenges.

• Review completed engineering deliverables before release.

• Collaborate with broader team partners (quality assurance, certification, production, design, art, analytics, and so on) to ensure that engineering interests and values are represented and maintained through the course of development, and that features are being developed with Tech capabilities and performance limitations in mind.

• Identify, manage, and drive to completion, risks and mitigations for the project

• Perform research to acquire new knowledge necessary to perform assigned tasks and maintain the technological evolution of the project.

• Gain a depth of knowledge of The Sims and EA's current game technology.

Qualifications:

• 8+ years of professional experience as a software engineer or lead engineer shipping games on console/PC/mobile.

• 3+ years of experience leading a team of software engineers to architect, develop, ship & live service a mobile/PC/console game.

• Shipped at least 1 AAA console (Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft) or cross-platform (mobile/console/PC) game.

• Experience working with internal and external development teams.

• Experience shipping games with a large code base in C++.

• Experience with devops tools and principles (e.g. Git, Perforce, CI/CD, Docker)

• Experience with architecture of game systems spanning tools, client & server technologies.

• Expert in at least one of the following domains, and some experience with the other two:

  • Game simulation systems

  • Content delivery, In-game marketplace and live service systems

  • Resource management, memory management & graphics performance optimization