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Development Director - Battlefield Central Tech (Online)

Battlefield

We are looking for talented people to join our team building core, impactful, and empowering technology for Battlefield! Our Battlefield Technology Team is home to remarkable technical talent building Battlefield tools and technology on EA’s proprietary game engine, Frostbite. We strive to empower engineering and content creation with a myriad of tools and workflows, while empowering the multi-studio distributed development team to create innovative and connected experiences for Battlefield fans around the world. Our people are the backbone and driving force to our creative products, and that’s why we’re dedicated to providing everyone the chance to express themselves and be their very best as we work towards a common cause. Join us!

Role Overview

We are looking for an experienced project and people manager who is passionate about the technology that powers our games to be our lead Online Development Director. You will work closely with the Online Technical Director, Online Product Owner and all the leads in the teams, to create a great environment for our teams, where everyone can do their best work for the Battlefield franchise and deliver consistently and on time. You will work closely with three Development Directors who are responsible for the Online teams and who are managing the engineers on the team, and they will report to you. You will use your experience and skills in people management to manage and coach them and engineers to grow and develop.

You will set up efficient processes, manage risks and resources and the overall planning for Online as well as continue the work on building a great working culture where everyone can develop and thrive. You will work closely with our stakeholders to keep them updated on risks and plans. You will work on staffing plans, recruitment, budget and everything needed to manage our department.

Requirements

• Project & Process management
• Ensures Agile roles are understood and well-played within Department, Pods & Teams so that participation is high quality (e.g. PO has a groomed backlog + sprint goals, team delivers on agreements, retrospectives have regular improvement actions, etc.)
• Always has departmental capacity and scope clear and aligned with Backlog and velocity
• Coordinates work across internal and external teams to minimize the impact of dependencies
• Identifies tech or tools that would benefit the team, increasing scalability and advocates for obtaining (e.g. Jira plug ins, upgrades; code quality monitors (e.g. Coverity), etc.
• Identifies and manages risks and dependencies across multiple domains or the entire project; including identifying and managing critical paths.
• Utilizes various risk management techniques such as a risk matrix to prioritize risk strategies across a project.
• Team and individual management
• Coach entire department on Agile & Scrum Ceremonies, including developing reports and representing department in Scrum-of-Scrums.
• Creates skillset matrices and includes skill upgrades into Sprint work (through assignments or training), and aligns personal goals and development plans with day-to-day work.
• Coaching on process improvement, especially on roles/responsibilities and what good looks like, process-wise.
• Manages people directly and also manages managers, aligning career and development goals with day-to-day work, plus delivering candid feedback to individuals
• Organizes and coordinates team building activities and get together (whether virtual or in-person)
• Identifies personnel conflicts and works to candidly communicate and solve in win-win ways.
• Change Management
• Drives and executes change management initiatives within the team. Responsible for adoption and acceptance of change within the team.
• Will create clarity through roles & responsibilities reinforcement (e.g. using RACI-style charts & practices)

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional experience as a project manager, (preferably with experience in shipping AAA games)
• Proven track record of driving initiatives from inception through to completion
• Ability to work in a dynamic and collaborative environment
• Strong communicator and listener
• Skilled leader who can challenge and influence a variety of partners across all levels of organization.
• Self-starter who builds trusted relationships, influences decisions and urgency on important priorities.
• Passionate, you care about the creative process, your teams, and delivering the highest quality software to our fans.
• Excellent change management skills, i.e., comfortable with ambiguity and constant change, yet able to set priorities and work commitments.
• Have passion, energy, enthusiasm to achieve results.
• Self-reflective; acknowledge own experience and experiences of others.
• Strategic thinker, you can think big picture and lead accordingly.