Studio Production Director

Certain Affinity, Inc.•Toronto, ON

4d•CA$175,000 - CA$220,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Certain Affinity is seeking a Studio Production Director to act as the central architect for the Production department and provide leadership oversight for Quality Assurance as the company scales its multi-site ecosystem and expands its lead development efforts. This role is a member of the company’s Senior Leadership Team (SLT) and serves as a peer to other department heads. The Studio Production Director drives studio-wide strategy and operational excellence, prioritizing operational excellence, strategic leadership, and stakeholder & business management. This role ensures development operations remain agile and transparent, scaling effectively to support a diverse and growing portfolio of lead and co-development projects while promoting the company's values.

Requirements

12+ years of game production management experience
5+ years running a production team that has shipped multiple AAA console and PC titles
Exceptional capacity to manage complex, concurrent variables across multiple teams, time zones, disciplines, and sometimes even languages without missing a beat.
A highly collaborative, low-ego team player who builds trust with the company’s senior leadership team, welcomes candid and respectful debate, and works across functions to align priorities, resolve challenges, advance the broader interests of the studio, and ensure consistent high-quality project output and timeliness.
A proven track record of navigating high-stakes, highly sensitive conversations with internal executives, development partners, external publishers, global IP holders, sister studios, and vendors.
A solution-oriented change agent accustomed to utilizing processes to solve complex development problems and optimize operational efficiency.
A proven history of identifying critical threats to project goals early, and providing immediate, context-driven solutions without systemic escalation.
Deep, empirical understanding of the physical realities of game development: engine constraints, build pipelines, QA integration, cross-discipline dependencies, and the ability to build bulletproof contract and milestone architecture.

Nice To Haves

Previous tenure as a Studio Production Director or equivalent multi-project operational lead.
Deep functional experience operating within the Unreal Engine (UE4/UE5) ecosystem and other proprietary game development engines.
Direct experience fostering productive, long-term relationships with established global brands and major IP holders.
An avid gamer across multiple platforms and genres.

Responsibilities

Identify, recruit, and integrate top-tier production talent across all studio levels, establishing a resilient succession plan for key production leadership roles.
Provide leadership oversight of the QA discipline, managing the QA Discipline Lead to ensure quality concerns, stability risks, bug trends, and milestone readiness are evaluated objectively.
Institute scalable frameworks for continuing education and high-fidelity performance feedback for the Production department.
Serve as the final line of defense for high-quality and timely project delivery, intervening in complex or distressed projects to provide leadership cover, untangle bottlenecks, and stabilize stakeholder relationships.
Act as the central planner for studio-wide resource deployment, dynamically load-balancing staffing and risk across projects.
Evaluate, design, and deploy project management frameworks that minimize operational friction and eliminate waste.
Drive the identification and adoption of new production tools and methodologies that provide objective data and improve cross-studio alignment.
Serve as a primary game development conduit for key external partners, IP holders, sister studios, and external vendors.
Partner directly with the Business Development team to vet new opportunities, support partner vetting and negotiations, and model the impact of potential contracts on studio resource bandwidth and goals.
Drive operational and cultural transitions required to ship Lead Development titles alongside co-development portfolio.
Partner with other discipline directors to redesign studio workflows and champion selective and strategic innovation.