VP of Production
Location: Remote
Reports To: President, Atari
About the Role:
Atari’s VP of Production will lead production across all North American studios and external development partners, including Nightdive, Digital Eclipse, and other Atari groups. This role owns the end-to-end production system for North America, overseeing all producers, external development teams, and the full production pipeline to ensure projects are delivered on time, on budget, and at quality, while coordinating closely with European studios on shared planning, dependencies, and resource alignment.
The VP of Production will serve as the Executive Producer across the portfolio, co-leading the greenlight process in partnership with the Chief Creative Officer and Atari Finance. This role ensures disciplined milestone execution, enforces production standards, and drives efficient resource allocation across all projects.
This leader is responsible for building scalable production systems and long-term capacity planning in collaboration with studio heads and operations in a manner that optimizes resource allocation while preserving what makes each studio distinct. They will partner with the VP of Publishing to align production with go-to-market strategies and post-launch support.
Responsibilities:
Portfolio Oversight
- Serve as Executive Producer across all Atari studios in North America.
- Own the production pipeline across internal and external development teams, ensuring delivery against defined milestones, budgets and quality standards, and coordinate with European studios on shared portfolio planning, dependencies, and resource alignment.
- Drive alignment and standardization of production processes, tools, and quality assessment standards across groups.
- Own portfolio-level risk strategy, including proactive identification, mitigation planning, and cross-project risk balancing.
Team Leadership
- Lead, mentor, and manage the producer organizations across all studios.
- Define and develop roles, responsibilities, and job descriptions to ensure clear expectations of individual contributors and career paths to build a high-performing production discipline.
- Partner with project leads and studio heads to support day-to-day execution.
- Build and scale production capabilities to support a growing portfolio.
- Lead with composure under pressure, setting the standard for disciplined execution across teams.
Greenlight & Planning
- Co-lead the greenlight process with the Chief Creative Officer, balancing creative ambition with production feasibility and execution risk.
- Evaluate project viability, including scope realism, resourcing strategy (internal vs. external), and delivery risk.
- Collaborate with studio heads, operations, and finance to build capacity planning models aligned with strategic priorities.
- Ensure greenlight decisions reflect business objectives, market opportunities, and long-term portfolio strategy.
- Maintain executive ownership of schedules, budgets, and milestone commitments across all approved projects.
Production Systems & Operational Frameworks
- Design and implement scalable production frameworks that define how development operates across all studios and partners.
- Establish KPIs, reporting systems, and production health metrics to enable clear visibility into portfolio performance (e.g. predictability, throughput, quality and budget adherence).
- Drive workflow optimization across teams, identifying inefficiencies and continuously improving production processes.
- Standardize tools, milestone structures, and delivery frameworks to ensure predictability and scalability across projects.
Execution & Delivery
- Own delivery outcomes across the portfolio, ensuring projects meet milestones, budget, and quality commitments.
- Enforce milestone rigor through clear deliverable definitions, acceptance criteria, and accountability across internal teams and external partners.
- Implement proactive risk management systems, ensuring risks are identified early and mitigated effectively.
- Serve as the escalation point for production challenges, driving resolution and maintaining forward momentum.
- Act as the unifying operator across design, engineering, and art to ensure alignment between creative vision and execution.
- Partner cross-functionally with QA, marketing, and publishing to deliver high-quality launches and post-launch success.
Stakeholder Management
- Provide clear, data-driven reporting on portfolio health, risks, and trade-offs to the President and executive team.
- Drive alignment across creative, technical, and business stakeholders when priorities conflict.
- Build strong relationships with internal studios and external partners to ensure collaboration and accountability.
Qualifications:
- 10+ years of experience in game production
- Proven track record of shipping multiple high-quality titles across platforms.
- Strong leadership experience managing teams of producers and external partners.
- Deep understanding of game development processes, from concept to live operations.
- Experience with portfolio management, resource planning, and greenlight/governance processes.
- Excellent communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence across creative, technical, and executive stakeholders.
- Passion for games and alignment with Atari’s mission to honor and evolve its legacy.