Senior Producer

Please note - This role is only open to those residing within the UK and with the right to work in the UK.

Senior Producers are responsible for making sure that often several, major and/or complex project/s are delivered on time and on budget. This involves significant process management to ensure that the streams of work are broken down in detail, allocated, estimated, scheduled, and then tracked against completion. Senior Producers bring their experience into play to ensure that the project runs as smoothly as possible.

Senior Producers need to understand how the wider company works, the challenges and issues of the various teams - quality, art, animation, development, audio, marketing and programming and is constantly seeking improvements to process and relationships. They also need to a develop highly effective relationships with team leaders and their project members, understanding team dynamics and how to motivate and get the best from each project team member.

Senior Producers will play a pivotal role in shaping, coaching and developing less experienced Producers within the team and providing ad hoc practical support as required.

As a Senior Producer at Coatsink, postholders are required to work alongside studio management, Department Heads and project leads to develop schedules, project plan and manage resource requirements for the full product lifecycle.

Responsibilities & Tasks

• Develop excellent relationships with department heads, team members, key internal and external stakeholders, including external publishers.
• Provide pragmatic support and advice to experienced Producers within the team as required.
• Providing coaching, guidance and training to other Producers in the team.
• Foster and facilitate an environment of constant improvement and development.
• Encourage creativity throughout the project development process to deliver the best product possible.
• To oversee and set quality benchmarks, encouraging the project team/s to focus on quality issues throughout the development process.
• Effectively lead daily stand ups, sprint planning meetings, demo meetings, release planning meetings and retrospective meetings.
• Oversee release and submission activity, undertaking associated tasks as required.
• Assist with and facilitate communication between multiple disciplines and teams.
• Keep colleagues and senior managers up-to-date on project milestones and any issues that may affect the smooth running of the project.
• Manage a product backlog to ensure tasks are prioritise and goals are visible.
• Oversee and manage any associated project documentation.
• Assess and mitigate risk and produce an action plan when an existing plan deviates from tolerance.

Person Specification

Required Experience

• Experience of in excess of 3 full large or complex product life cycle (from concept phase to release) on a game or digital product, in a production role.

• Minimum of five years of experience in a production role or project management role within the games industry (preferred) or similar industry e.g. software development.

• Experience of process improvement; someone who can look for opportunities to set up processes to help improve the way we manage our teams and projects.

• Experience of managing relationship and expectations with external publishers.

• Experience in identifying and managing large project risks i.e. taking action to support the team in avoiding those risks for the benefit of the long-term project.

• Proven track record as an effective project leader on several consecutive and/or a major project, i.e. someone who can motivate and encourage the team to realise their creative and collaborative potential.

Preferred Experience

• Extensive experience using Jira to build and maintain backlogs, as well as designing workflows and systems for team members to use.

• Significant experience working on VR projects.

Required Skills

•  Highly proficient in large scale or multiple consecutive project management methodologies and able to apply knowledge of these to help in the smooth running of our projects. Specifically, knowledge of agile, and scrum methodologies.

• Excellent leadership skills and proven record of leading several or a large team and taking initiative when needed.

• Effective interpersonal skills to get the best out of each member of the project team.

• Excellent organisation skills and conscientious in approach.

• Effective negotiating skills.

• Clear, concise communication skills that reflect Coatsink company values, when interacting with team members, managers and external parties.

• Excellent stakeholder management. This means setting and managing expectations, looking for ways to satisfy the requirements of external stakeholders, including external publishers, whilst protecting the team’s and project goals.

• Flexible and reactive when needed.

• Self-organised and ability to set own priorities, especially whilst working remotely.

• Ability to engage and act on the best advice, including that of specialists within the Coatsink team.

Attitudes and Aptitudes

• A champion and exemplar of Coatsink’s key values and contributor to the company culture including-

• A passion and enthusiasm for Coatsink games.

• A straightforward and open approach to the team and to leadership.

• An openness to others’ ideas and challenges around quality issues.

• An eye to the wellbeing of project team members.

• Mindful approach to diversity issues and opportunities to widen the scope of diversity within games.