This job might no longer be available.

Development Director

Development Director, Distributed Development

Development directors in the Distributed Development (DistDev) team manage a variety of responsibilities in partnership with internal team members, clients, EA stakeholders and external 3rd party developers.

The DistDev DDs are responsible for finding scalability and content creation solutions for EA’s internal teams, primarily through 3rd party developers, but also through internal solutions like leveraging other EA locations and resources.

The DistDev DDs are responsible for working with client teams such as Artworks, EA Shanghai and even non-content partners to find content creation solutions and scalability by applying standardized process for requirements gathering, requirements analysis and 3rd party vendor shortlisting, testing and selection, or alternative solutions. Responsible for being an information conduit between content distributed development and other EA teams, such as XDI and External Dev teams at other studios.

The DistDev DDs are keepers of the distributed development artifacts for each engagement such as distributed development schedule, staffing plan, budget, travel and onsite, training, stakeholders register, risk register and communications plan.

Distributed Development DDs play a vital role in successfully moving the content development teams from one project phase to the next while ensuring a strong focus on quality, collaboration and communication (both internally and externally). They must work with internal and external teams to ensure that they are managing the project on time, to quality, and within budget.

The DistDev DD also serves as an escalation point for internal team and 3rd party development teams when production issues need resolution.

Leadership:

• Build effective partnerships including establishing trust and credibility with EA Studios and Vendor studios around the globe
• Build and maintain effective working relationships with immediate team and those outside of the immediate team that influence the successful completion of the project
• Seek knowledge and develop process improvements and actively apply them to improve the organization.
• Manage a small team of employees; provide challenges and developmental opportunities to ensure that all employees reach their potential.
• Provides regular coaching and mentoring for direct reports; ensure the team is trained on the necessary skills, processes, and best practices
• Provide line management to employees across disciplines within a single project team
• Maintain regular communication with project teams and coordinate dependencies with external partners
• Drive collaboration with other DistDev team members and Content teams such as Global Resourcing, Business Operations and Artworks.

Development:

• Proactively assesses and mitigates risk for assigned scope and actively work with product owners and tech leads to resolve problems that come up
• Partner with client DDs, Leads and TAs to manage scope and quality
• Take ownership and see projects through despite obstacles and difficult circumstances, while demonstrating a sense of dependability and commitment
• Hold Game Teams, Artworks, Distributed Development, EA Shanghai and 3rd party vendors responsible for delivering on agreed upon content; systemize upstream and downstream dependency management and reporting for the Distributed Development team
• Help improve all distributed development processes including leveraging the best tools, review practices and collaborative relationships (within and external to Content teams)
• Report status at regular intervals, escalate urgent issues in a timely manner
• Manage assigned distributed development budgets including short and long-term forecasts
• Identify, assign, and track development and organizational issues to completion
• Solve problems, balance priorities, and find creative solutions to achieve results

Project management:

• Establish an overall distributed development project schedule based on the individual task estimates for content development
• Determine the resource requirements to meet the task requirements
Establish a project budget, staffing plan, onsite and training plan, determine task dependencies, and assign tasks to team resources as appropriate
• Run stand ups and sprint planning meetings effectively (or conduct engagement alignment in an alternative, effective, visible manner)
• Track work progress and report status back to product owners at a regular cadence

Qualifications:

• Ability to recognize and balance priorities focusing on eliminating the root causes of problems
• Prioritizing and resolving issues through creative problem-solving skills
• Highly developed relationship-building skills and the ability to establish credibility and influence within EA and external development partners
• Senior level influencing skills
• Effective communication skills across all levels and organizations
• Experience in various project management methodologies
• Ability to work in a dynamic and collaborative team environment