Project Management Office Director

About the job: Steer Studios (formerly known as Savvy Games Studios) mission is to create a world-leading game studios in Saudi Arabia, creating high-quality games for international audiences. Also to help Saudi’s passionate gaming sector to develop homegrown IP and more broadly, make KSA a global hub for gaming. As part of the Steer studios team, you will work alongside the best global gaming talents who have relocated to Riyadh to be part of the ambitious group, and innovative, passionate and hardworking Saudis. You will be working closely with the CEO and VP and Producers. You will be responsible for building design teams and collaborating with partners. The major focus areas of this position will be people management, creativity, communication, problem solving and mitigation. Steer Studios is seeking a Project Management Office Director responsible for the management of the PMO services. You will contribute on the Production Services of Steer Studios to grow and improve the operations excellence of our practices. This person is accountable for the Operational Services layer that supports the studio by overseeing the management of transversal teams & Production services: Co-development, Agile Practices & Production Methodologies & PMO. Overall the profile is responsible to execute and communicate on the overall project schedule, prepare the deliverables, and works in collaboration with the production team's to assess the time required for each task leading up to game delivery. He or she is able to set warnings and show their impact on the project KPI’s. In this mission, this person collaborates closely with various teams of the studio and continue helping and promoting our cluster at the transversal level.

Job Responsibilities:

• Management of Co-Development Services – Contribute to the implementation of co-development mandates with collaborating studios, communicate the mandate to the teams, make any necessary adjustments and ensure compliance throughout the production process
• Centralize information on current and future mandates
• Assess needs for upcoming projects within the Steer studios and provide visibility on future requirements and relevant service teams
• Challenge service teams and act as facilitators when difficulties arise
• Develop standards and guidelines to ensure a smooth technical collaboration between lead and associate studios
• Follow project progression and collect feedback from internal and external collaborators
• Approve or obtain approval for the work carried out by the collaborating studios at the end of each phase (iterative process)
• Efficiently communicate with the associate studios to inform them of the project direction (top-down) and inform supervisors of relevant information pertaining to the work team (bottom-up)
• Anticipate risks related to inter-studio software development and collaborate with technical stakeholders in the lead and associate studios to plan mitigations
• Maintain partner information within our database.

Requirements:

• 8+ years of relevant work experience (e.g. project management, PMO support, business analysis)
• Experience working in a PMO group is strongly preferred
• Expert-level knowledge of Excel required, macro programming experience preferred
• Expert-level knowledge of collaboration tools (e.g. SharePoint, Confluence, JIRA)
• Experience supporting a PPM system (e.g. CA Clarity, Planview, Planisware) desired
• PMP or similar certifications strongly desired
• Highly motivated and with demonstrable leadership attributes
• Outstanding analytical and critical thinking skills
• Extremely diligent and attentive to details
• Effective communicator at all levels with excellent English writing skills
• Ability to cope under pressure and balancing multiple priorities
• Strong understanding of project management and IT governance (e.g. ITIL, PMBOK, Scrum)
• Strong understanding of financial planning and budgeting desired.