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At Hinterland, we are world-creators. In order to create best-in-class entertainment experiences for our players, we need to ensure smooth-running logistics infrastructure, and the bedrock of our work as a Remote-First studio is a robust suite of hardware and software solutions that facilitate team cohesion, communication, and the development of our games.
Since we are growing, we are seeking a dedicated IT Manager to meet the expanding needs of our team, which is located across a variety of time-zones and geographical locations, with two physical studios, located in Vancouver and Victoria, BC. In this Hybrid-Remote role, the IT Manager will need to spend at least 2 to 3-days per week across the two studios to support our expanding operations. Only people who thrive within a high-autonomy, high-accountability work environment need apply!
In this role you will be responsible for all things IT-related at Hinterland. This includes the full range of procurement, maintenance, development, deployment, and support, ranging from our team’s individual workstations to our studio’s networked servers as well as all the software and services we run on them.
About You:
You should have a people-first attitude, with a strong sense of service and a desire to collaborate with and help people to work through problems. As you will often be required to support remote team members, it’s critical that you have a friendly, supportive demeanour and a desire to solve problems with people you can’t simply sit down with. A humanistic approach is paramount.
You are driven to own and expand your skill set, and challenge yourself to provide the right solutions for Hinterland, through research, sandboxing and scaled deployments. You thrive in helping people answer complex questions, finding solutions and supporting the studios development needs, through usage of a variety of tools and technologies. You value deep dives and understanding a project before executing, and are driven to ensure we have alternative plans if we run into issues. You must have excellent judgement and problem-solving skills.
You have love for process optimization, and are familiar with scripting and automation. Your success will come from being able to efficiently manage repetitive tasks through automation, scripting, image creation, and other common support tools.
You are driven to answer questions from a position of curiosity, and not from a position of “this is how it’s always been done” knowledge. When you don’t know the answer you are eager to find out, while keeping the invested parties informed on your progress. You see value in saying “I don’t know, but I will find out.”
About the Role:
Working alongside project leaders and the People & Culture team, you would be our go-to person for assessment, setup, and deployment of new software and hardware. You will procure, maintain, and distribute hardware to team members as needed, and will manage an inventory of laptops, workstations, game consoles, development kits, and other hardware and software items required for the development of interactive entertainment products.
You will be a proactive partner for the People & Culture team in the preparation and onboarding of new team members, as it relates to hardware and software setup. You will also be responsible for ensuring the delivery of ready-to-use hardware for team members (with the support of studio admin staff who will support with logistics). You would also own all relationships needed to keep our infrastructure up and running, and continue to expand those relationships as the studio’s needs grow.
Perforce servers, network shares, PC/Mac/Linux environments, VPN, various services, backups, as well as a number of software solutions commonly found in game development form the basis of your day-to-day focus. Hinterland uses a variety of technologies, but proficiency with *nix based environments are a requirement.
Though IT is your main focus, there will be occasions where the line is blurred with facilities (for example, helping to set up meeting rooms, preparing display devices for team presentations, etc.) You should have a desire to tackle new challenges and come up with solutions to support Hinterland’s various IT needs, and be willing to roll up your sleeves to help out wherever you can make a contribution. We are a team of makers and do-ers, not clock-watchers, so bring your supportive “can do” nature and your desire to make a positive impact on our growing team.
Your Impact:
Through your efforts, the studio’s IT needs will be met, ensuring that every team member has the hardware and software they need to be successful, and that issues and blockers are addressed in a timely fashion. A smooth-running IT operation will help keep the team focused and happy, and empowered to do good work every day. You will be a big part of what ensures the team can operate smoothly.
Your Responsibilities:
Your Skills and Qualifications:
In an industry not known for taking care of its people, Hinterland strives to be different. We believe that the diversity, points of view, experience, and individual backgrounds of our team members contribute to a rich mosaic that helps us create better experiences, and helps those experiences reach a wider audience.
Hinterland is an equal-opportunity employer. We encourage applicants from all backgrounds to apply for our positions, regardless of ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation or identity, or religious affiliation. We value seniority and experience for our senior and leadership roles, but are always looking for ways to bring diverse viewpoints and experiences from across the spectrum of entertainment and technology.
We embrace a flexible working environment that focuses on high-autonomy balanced against high personal accountability. All our positions are remote-first, focused on finding the best fit for culture and talent. This remote-first flexibility is balanced with a physical studio in Vancouver, which is optionally available (COVID-permitting) to anyone on the team who wants to use it. We strengthen our team bond through offsite retreats, where we focus on creating memories together. We feel this balance of remote and in-person opportunities creates the strongest alloy for our culture.
We encourage everyone on the team to find balance between work and life, and never ask anyone to compromise one for the other. We are a No Crunch studio. We have high expectations of the level of commitment and the quality of the work done by our team, and trust everyone to manage their own schedule and workload. We offer a generous bundle of benefits and vacation time, and strongly encourage our team members to enjoy the 5+ weeks of paid time off we offer annually. We are a family-first studio and offer a range of tools to support our team and their growing families.
Our Culture
We have a high-autonomy, high-accountability culture. Project teams work to support a clear direction, and individuals are expected to sign on to accomplish their goals with the minimal amount of supervision. We don’t want to micromanage and we can’t have people who need that.
We believe that to create thoughtful entertainment, you need thoughtful people. We want people who appreciate the value of discourse, and aren’t afraid to present an alternative opinion. Our aim is to attract the best collaborators we can, and great collaboration comes from a willingness to share your point of view within an environment where there is a clear direction and strong decision-making can happen.
We have a light project-management infrastructure that emphasizes communication and collaboration over “time in your chair”. We believe everyone on the team has a stake in work being completed on time, and we expect everyone to be active contributors to the planning process.
We believe that anyone good enough to join Hinterland is good enough to be trusted to make a meaningful contribution in a way that aligns with company and project goals, without needing to be closely managed. Success with this approach depends on having mature people with a wealth of experience. We recognize that not everyone can work this way, which is why it’s good to talk about it up front.
We believe that being given a high degree of autonomy means you have the responsibility to be accountable for the commitments you have made to your team-mates, your project, and the studio at large. Accountability without autonomy is not fair to the individual, but autonomy without accountability is not fair to the team.
We strive to do things differently, to ensure they are always done to the highest ethical and moral standard, both in work and in business. We take care of each other, we take care of our projects, and we collectively take care of the company. In turn, the company takes care of us.
We expect anyone who joins Hinterland to be committed to having a respectful work environment. We do not crunch, we do not do office politics, and we do not abuse people. We want you to have a life outside of work, so that you can bring positive energy to the team dynamic and help us achieve great things.
We also acknowledge that our culture may not be for everyone, and that’s ok. In the hiring process, we are filtering our fit to you, as much as your fit for us. In the end, we want you to be happy at Hinterland, and nobody benefits from a missed alignment in goals or culture. The longer we can work together, the stronger we can become as a studio, and we think it’s worth taking the time that’s needed to ensure there’s a good fit, for you and for us.
Our purpose is to make Hinterland the best creator of interactive experiences in the world. We won’t get there without you. Join us in our mission.
Life at Hinterland
Join Us on Our Journey
We are a diverse group of creators who care as much about how we make things, as what we make. We care about our worlds, our players, and our people. We believe passion for work and balance in life are not only compatible ideas, but are symbiotic. If you want to help craft the future of interactive entertainment, join us on our journey.
Imagine the lights go out, never to return. Bright aurora flare across the sky, and all humanity’s technological might is laid to waste, neutralized in a kind of quiet apocalypse. Everything that has shielded humanity from the disinterested power of Mother Nature is suddenly wrenched from us, dropping us a few links down the food chain. Food and water are scarce. The roads are no longer safe. And winter approaches…
Welcome to The Long Dark —an immersive survival simulation set in the aftermath of a geomagnetic disaster. Experience a unique first-person survival simulation that will force you to think and push you to your limits with its thought-provoking gameplay.
We’ve been lucky to have some incredible jobs working at and partnering with some of the biggest brands in video games.
But we’ve never had more fun and been more fulfilled than when we were working with indie game developers.
Everyone in games should have that much fun.
Our hope is that Work With Indies will connect job seekers with the most rewarding, most inspirational, and most fun jobs they've ever had.
