Retro Studios has hired the director of Warhawk as its development head

Metroid Prime 4 studio continues hiring spree

Industry veteran Dylan Jobe has confirmed his role as director of development at Metroid Prime 4 developer Retro Studios.

Jobe joined the studio earlier this year and has more than 25 years of development experience which has seen him work on titles such as Doom, Twisted Metal: Black and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare remastered.

Most significantly, he was the director of 2007’s PlayStation exclusive Warhawk. In his latest role at Retro, Jobe is responsible for Metroid Prime 4’s schedule, scope and product quality, according to a job description.

He’ll also handle performance evaluations of development team members and act as the liaison between departments to meet production goals.

Nintendo announced in early 2019 that it had decided to “restart development from the beginning” for Metroid Prime 4, with producer Kensuke Tanabe calling in series creator Retro to take over the project from its original, unannounced developer.

Retro has been hiring for Metroid Prime 4 ever since and its jobs page is still advertising for a lead animator and boss/AI designer, among other roles.

One recent hire is Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst and Battlefield V art director Jhony Ljungstedt. Retro had been advertising for an art director role for more than a year before Ljungstedt’s hiring.

Veteran Halo creative Kyle Hefley, also joined as the studio’s new lead character artist in August 2019.

Hefley acted as senior character modeller for the Halo series and modelled many of the armoured super-soldiers and alien warriors that appeared in Halo 4, Halo 5 and the upcoming Halo Infinite, including Halo 5’s Master Chief.

New Super Lucky’s Tale and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze lead designer Stephen Dupree re-joined Retro in late 2019 after a two-year absence.

Retro Studios has also made Call of Duty: Black Ops veteran Bharathwaj ‘Bat’ Nandakumar its lead engineer, having most recently served the same role for the PC version of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4.

The Indian programmer had spent a decade at Activision working across every Black Ops instalment to date and specialises in online, tools and gameplay programming.