Blizzard Entertainment is hiring: Associate Technical Director, AI - Unannounced

Team Name: Unannounced Project

Job Title:

Associate Technical Director, AI - Unannounced Game

Requisition ID:

R024251

Job Description:

At Blizzard, we craft genre-defining games and legendary worlds for all to share. Through unparalleled creativity and storytelling, we create immersive universes and iconic characters that are beloved across platforms, borders, backgrounds, and generations - only made possible by building a work environment that nurtures the artistry of game development and unleashes the aspirations of our people.

We are seeking an experienced game AI engineering leader to help populate our game with compelling inhabitants, present players with interesting challenges, and bring our world to life. If you are interested in collaborating with designers and artists to craft creature behaviors, we need you!

This role is anticipated to be a hybrid work position, with some work on-site and some work-from-home. The home studio for this role is Irvine, CA.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with other discipline directors to establish, drive, and deliver on game AI vision and development roadmap.
• Support creature designers to bring their vision to life, creating an interesting, complex, and challenging world population at scale.
• Drive architecture and content creation toolset to ensure team productivity and high quality of results.
• Ensure engineering team is collaborating with developers and other gameplay teams to understand their needs and develop an aligned technical approach.
• Lead and mentor a team of game AI engineers, providing guidance and fostering a collaborative, innovative environment.
• Direct responsibility for technical quality of AI implementation.

Requirements

• 12+ years of experience in game engineering, with at least 4 years in a leadership or managerial role within the video game industry or a related field.
• Proven ability to lead and inspire a team, manage multiple projects, and collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams.
• Experience delivering AI behaviors for a modern, large-scale game world.
• Experience shipping at least one AAA title.
• Able to understand and write effective and efficient C++ code.
• Communicates ideas clearly, learns from others, and gives meaningful feedback.
• Skilled at performance analysis and code optimization.
• Interested in and/or plays a variety of video game genres and titles.

Extra Points

• Experience developing systems for modern online multiplayer games.
• Experience creating developer toolsets for large scale game productions.

Rewards

We provide a suite of benefits that promote physical, emotional and financial well-being for ‘Every World’ - we’ve got our employees covered! Subject to eligibility requirements, the Company offers comprehensive benefits including:

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance;
• 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching;
• Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave;
• Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others;
• If the Company requires that you move geographic locations for the job, then you may also be eligible for relocation assistance.

In the U.S., the standard base pay range for this role is $155,500.00 - $287,876.00 Annual. These values reflect the expected base pay range of new hires across all U.S. locations. Ultimately, your specific range and offer will be based on several factors, including relevant experience, performance, and work location. Your Talent Professional can share this role’s range details for your local geography during the hiring process. In addition to a competitive base pay, employees in this role may be eligible for incentive compensation. Incentive compensation is not guaranteed. While we strive to provide competitive offers to successful candidates, new hire compensation is negotiable.