About the role
ABOUT US
Ocellus Services is a leader in stylized Game Art and Game Development services. They work for top industry developers and publishers, such as Supercell, Epic Games, and Disney, while also developing their own IPs and games through Ocellus Games. The studio covers the full art pipeline from pre-production to production across all project sizes, genres, and platforms.
Ocellus Games is the game development studio of the Ocellus group. Their game development teams are small, independent, and focused on quality, utilizing the same artistic production quality provided to external partners.
JOB DESCRIPTION
The studio is looking for an experienced Technical Director to lead the technical direction of the studio and its multiple productions. The role involves leading programming teams working across several console titles in parallel, each with a unique creative identity and technical challenges. This position requires operating across technical vision, leadership, production, and hands-on engineering expertise.
TASKS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
- Lead, structure, and grow programming teams across multiple productions.
- Define the studio’s technical vision and drive its implementation across projects.
- Oversee game architecture and own key technical decisions.
- Ensure the quality, performance, stability, and maintainability of productions.
- Identify and anticipate technical risks and establish strategies to mitigate them.
- Work closely with creative and production teams to align ambition, technical constraints, schedules, and resources.
- Mentor Technical Leads and support the growth and development of programmers.
- Define and continuously improve the studio’s engineering standards, development practices, and technical processes.
- Lead recruitment for the programming team, from defining hiring needs to candidate selection and technical interviews.
- Participate in architecture reviews and code reviews for critical systems.
- Support productions through critical development phases, including final optimization and console certification.
- Identify technologies, tools, and pipelines that can be shared effectively across projects.
REQUIREMENTS
- Significant experience as a Technical Director, highly experienced Lead Programmer, or equivalent senior technical role in the video game industry.
- Experience working on cross-platform PC and console productions.
- Proven experience leading, mentoring, and developing teams of experienced programmers.
- Multiple shipped console titles, ideally with involvement throughout the full production lifecycle.
- Excellent C++ skills and a strong understanding of modern game engine architecture.
- Deep expertise across several core areas of console development, such as performance, memory management, multithreading, rendering, gameplay systems, tools, or pipelines.
- Ability to design and challenge complex technical architectures while maintaining a pragmatic, production-focused approach.
- Strong experience with profiling, optimization, and debugging complex issues on console hardware.
- Ability to make high-impact technical decisions in a multi-project environment with competing priorities and constraints.
- Strong leadership, communication, recruitment, and team development skills.
- Ability to collaborate effectively across engineering, creative, and production teams, and clearly communicate technical challenges and trade-offs to studio leadership.
- Experience with Unreal Engine and console certification pipelines is highly valued.
WORKING CONDITIONS
- This position is on-site in Lyon, France.
CULTURE
- La creme de la creme: Obsessed with excellence; never compromising on quality.
- Small and bold: Belief in human-sized, agile, and truly independent teams.
- Anyone can cook: Values ideas over hierarchy; encourages sharing opinions.
- Through learning we grow: Constant appetite for learning.
PERKS
- Flexible hours: Freedom and flexibility to manage personal and professional lives.
- Lunch coupon card: Provided as per French practices.
- Ocellus House full access: Access to play rooms, cinema room, events, masterclasses, and receptions.
- Team events: Team buildings and parties.
- You do you: Team members decide how they wish to perform tasks, share ideas, develop processes, and test concepts.