Job Description
Level is a learning technology company dedicated to helping students build real academic and life skills with confidence and joy. We combine proven curriculum principles with world class interactive design to make meaningful practice something students want to come back to, not something they struggle through.
We support what teachers, schools, and parents are already doing by increasing student engagement with high quality, standards aligned practice that reinforces classroom learning. That’s why we’re building:
For students: Rewarding and motivating learning experiences that build real academic proficiency.
For educators: Tools that fit naturally into instruction and help students stay engaged while reducing teacher workload.
For parents: Whether learning at school or at home, activities that help your kid catch up or get ahead, build confidence, and minimize homework battles.
We are committed to helping every person maximize their potential and live a life of meaning. It’s a difficult problem that requires brilliant people and tremendous effort over time.
If you want to use your skills to make a difference for the world, please check out our latest job opportunities.
The Opportunity
We're not just making educational games—we're building a new category entirely. One where learning feels like play, where content transcends screens to create real-world impact, and where kids actually want to engage because what we're making is genuinely compelling.
Our media department is the storytelling engine behind this vision. We're creating IP that matters, building a content platform that will set industry standards, and proving that educational entertainment doesn't have to be rudimentary or boring. This is the creative frontier where pedagogy meets genuine artistry.
The Role
As Production Director, you'll be the architect of organized chaos—making sense of 5-15 simultaneous projects spanning vertical shorts, animation features, interactive content, and formats we haven't invented yet. You're the bridge between wild creative ambition and actual deliverables, the person who can hold strategy in one hand and execution in the other without dropping either.
This isn't about maintaining a machine that's already running. This is about building the machine, testing it, breaking it, and rebuilding it better. You'll define processes where none exist, establish pipelines for content verticals that are still being imagined, and create the infrastructure that allows creativity to scale without losing its soul.
What You'll Own
Portfolio management across 5-15 active projects spanning multiple formats and production stages—from concept to distribution
Strategic planning for content verticals including short-form video, animation, interactive media, and emerging formats that complement our educational gaming ecosystem
Production infrastructure building: Develop processes, pipelines, and systems for a growing media department. You're establishing the foundation, not inheriting someone else's playbook
Cross-functional coordination between creative teams, game developers, educators, and distribution partners—translating between disciplines and keeping everyone aligned on the mission
Resource allocation and capacity planning: Understanding what's realistic, what's ambitious, and where the line between them lives at any given moment
Quality bar setting: Defining what "good" looks like for educational content that kids genuinely want to watch and parents genuinely trust
Team leadership and culture building: Foster an environment where producers, creators, and strategists thrive under pressure and rally around shared creative vision
Why You?
You've built something from nothing. Whether that's launching a new content vertical, standing up a production department, or shipping a project everyone said was impossible—you know what 0-to-1 feels like. You've navigated ambiguity, made decisions with incomplete information, and figured it out as you went.
You're fluent in both strategy and execution. You can zoom out to see the portfolio-level view (what should we make and why?) and zoom in to solve production blockers (how do we ship this by Tuesday?). You don't just think about the "what"—you obsess over the "how."
You speak multiple creative languages. You've produced across different formats or verticals. Maybe you've done live-action and animation. Maybe you've shipped games and video content. Maybe you've managed marketing campaigns and narrative features. The specifics matter less than your ability to pattern-match across disciplines and understand what makes each format work.
You have taste and judgment. You know what resonates with audiences because you've shipped enough to learn what works and what doesn't. You can look at early concepts and see potential. You can watch rough cuts and give notes that make things better, not just different.
You're comfortable with controlled chaos. Multiple projects in flight simultaneously doesn't scare you—it energizes you. You know how to triage, prioritize ruthlessly, and keep teams focused on what matters most when everything feels urgent.
You care about mission, not just metrics. You're drawn to work that matters. Educational content, health outcomes, conservation, social impact—whatever the cause, you want your work to manifest positive change in the physical world. You can't envision spending your career optimizing engagement for its own sake.
Ideal Background (not must-haves!)
We're looking for 7-12 years of production experience with a track record of managing complex slates and building infrastructure. You might come from:
Animation studios managing feature and series pipelines
Coordinating a robust slate of releases and events
Media companies producing across multiple formats and platforms
Marketing/brand studios juggling campaigns for different verticals
Entertainment production managing development slates
What matters more than where you've been: Can you build systems that scale creativity? Can you manage complexity without losing sight of quality? Can you lead teams through uncertainty with confidence and clarity?
What We Offer
Mission alignment: We're building products that genuinely improve kids' lives. Our educational games are designed to engage—not just digitize worksheets—and our content complements learning in ways that actually stick.
Creative freedom with purpose: You'll have real latitude to define how this media department operates, what we make, and how we make it. The guardrails are mission (educational impact) and excellence (we won't ship mediocre content). Everything else is negotiable.
Cross-disciplinary collaboration: Work alongside game developers, educators, designers, and storytellers. Learn from people outside your discipline. Build something at the intersection of entertainment and education that hasn't existed before.
Location: We value in-person collaboration and believe the best creative work happens when people are in the same room solving problems together. We're based in Austin, TX and want someone to build alongside Chief Publishing Officers, Directors, and even the President of our company directly!
Growth trajectory: This role will evolve as the media department scales. You're not just managing today's slate—you're building tomorrow's studio.
Industry Leading package:
The Honest Reality Check
This role is not for everyone, and that's by design.
If you need clear process documentation, established workflows, and predictable days—this isn't it. We're figuring things out as we go, and that requires comfort with ambiguity.
If you want to manage a single format or vertical with deep focus—this probably isn't it either. You'll be spanning multiple content types simultaneously, which means context-switching is daily reality.
If you're energized by building new things, love the challenge of making order from chaos, and want your work to matter beyond quarterly metrics—let's talk.
We're looking for someone who gets excited about hard problems, who sees opportunity in uncertainty, and who wants to prove that educational content can be as compelling as anything else kids choose to watch.
Sound like you? Tell us about something you built from scratch, how you think about balancing creative ambition with production reality, and why this particular mission resonates with you.
We're not looking for perfect resumes—we're looking for builders who want to make something that matters.