Technical Director, AI / Ml - Games- R&D Tech Lab

Job Description

The Game Studio is building an incubation style R&D team chartered to lead our investments in building new kinds of games not previously possible without ongoing advances AI/ML technologies. We aim to explore new applications of emerging technologies to discover game designs and architectures not before possible. This team will incubate and prototype concepts with the intent to eventually build a complete team to ship something new that could change the games industry and reach player audiences in new ways, as well as influencing adoption of AI technologies and tooling that are likely to level up our practices.

We're looking for a Technical Director with a game industry track record of leading technically complex and creative projects that lead to successful, innovative games, and will be expected to balance strategic and technical thinking with hands-on engineering work, especially through the early phases. This person will also be asked to represent the team and projects as a whole and eventually build a more complete team to eventually ship a game based on early discoveries of novel prototypes that show big opportunity. Pre-existing deep knowledge of AI/ML is not required, but some awareness and interest in diving in and building a workable knowledge in collaboration with an AI/ML expert partner is expected.

RESPONSIBILITIES
• Games technology strategy, development and prototyping: Being able to find opportunities to integrate ML/AI technologies with not entirely known game development systems and processes is key, and being able to do enough hands on prototyping work in the early days to demonstrate inspiring traction is needed.
• Team Leadership: Able to work across disciplines with minimum process to organize work and create predictability in an unpredictable space, eventually working with leadership to recommend, specify, and build a team around whatever discoveries the team finds that represents a major opportunity.
• Creative: The ideal candidate is able to bring player empathy to the technical work and can reasonably pursue ''fun'' as well as technical creativity. In the long term, the team will consider dedicated design resources but in the short term until there's a better understanding of what is possible, a technology leader who also understands game design and perhaps proactively works with other design leaders in our organization to hone thoughts will be important.

REQUIREMENTS
• 10+ years experience shipping AAA, casual or mobile games, with high complexity innovations (vs solely iterative or pure sequels), in a technical director type role.
• High comfort with technical complexity and ambiguity, and an interest to pioneer
• Exceptional communication, cross discipline collaboration and leadership skills
• Passion for making video games, and how technology enables joy in innovative ways

Bonus Skill
• Strong product/design sense
• Familiarity with multiple game engine technologies such as Unity3D and UnrealEngine
• Expertise in leveraging mixes of ''cloud'' services and APIs to create complex game features and architectures
Our compensation structure consists solely of an annual salary; we do not have bonuses. You choose each year how much of your compensation you want in salary versus stock options. To determine your personal top of market compensation, we rely on market indicators and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience to determine your compensation in the market range. The range for this role is $240,000 - 1,000,000.

Netflix provides comprehensive benefits including Health Plans, Mental Health support, a 401(k) Retirement Plan with employer match, Stock Option Program, Disability Programs, Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts, Family-forming benefits, and Life and Serious Injury Benefits. We also offer paid leave of absence programs. Full-time hourly employees accrue 35 days annually for paid time off to be used for vacation, holidays, and sick paid time off. Full-time salaried employees are immediately entitled to flexible time off. See more detail about our Benefits here.

Netflix is a unique culture and environment. Learn more here.

We are an equal opportunity employer and celebrate diversity, recognizing that diversity of thought and background builds stronger teams. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.

Jobcode: Reference SBJ-g4860v-18-116-14-133-42 in your application.