Technical Director, Interactive Media
Second Story conceptualizes, designs, and develops interactive media experiences that enchant, inform, and entertain, pioneering new ways to inspire wonder and connect audiences to stories, ideas, and information. Our studio is intensely collaborative and collegial across all disciplines. We strive for an atmosphere in which the work is paramount, but where individual effort can also shine. We all share a love for storytelling and a desire to make great things. What animates Second Story is the devotion to building experiences that inspire wonder, drive action, and create delight.
Second Story is looking for a Technical Director to lead and manage the studio’s interactive developers. The Technical Director leads the development of all interactive media experiences, working with studio teams to ensure technology choices and execution match creative needs, schedule, and budget. The ideal candidate is a visionary thinker with an inquisitive mind, a person keen to integrate new technologies and accomplished at expressing creativity of vision in code and software architecture.
The Technical Director is responsible for optimal operational efficiencies of the team they manage, informing and matching resources to tasks, facilitating regular communication on progress, and proactively resolving issues and process bottlenecks. The Technical Director is a core member of the studio who collaborates with teams of designers, producers, and production coordinators.
Working to inform a project’s development trajectory, this includes taking an active role in prototyping, planning, architecting, and executing code. Day-to-day tasks include working with developers and producers to inform estimates, working with developers to produce production plans, ensuring production plans are followed and continue to match creative vision and project scope, and working with teams to adjust as necessary.
The Technical Director must be:
• An effective communicator with a proven history of successful collaboration with designers, producers, developers, engineers, fabricators, and contractors.
• A technical leader with 3+ years of experience leading small development teams, managing contractors, and taking a lead role in defining and warranting best practices in software engineering.
• A software engineer with 5+ years of experience building interactive experiences in a combination of languages: c++, c#, java, actionscript, javascript, python, and php.
• A technology-agnostic software architect who shows an understanding of the value of building experiences within frameworks including openFrameworks, Processing, Cinder, OpenTK, Backbone, JQuery, and Symfony.
• A playful experimenter with interest and facility in developing for diverse interactive platforms (mobile, web and desktop).
• A practical, pragmatic innovator whose solutions elicit responses that justify the effort and expense.
This is an exceptional opportunity for a rewarding career to inform, inspire, educate, enchant, and entertain—as opposed to brand, market, and sell to—audiences through diverse projects for significant and influential cultural institutions and brands. This position is located in Portland, Oregon, with a very competitive, comprehensive salary and a benefits package that includes medical, dental, disability, employer-contributed 401(k), and professional development funds.
Please send your resume and your portfolio to joinus@secondstory.com