Development Director - Sports Art

Job Description

EA SPORTS ART team is looking for an experienced Development Director to join our awesome team and expand it to our new location in Madrid, Spain. Our team delivers the art for some of the biggest sports videogame franchises in the world, including Madden NFL football, College Football, PGA Golf, and more.

Initially you will be responsible for hiring a team of artists and onboarding them to their respective projects as well as EA as a company. As the team gets up and running, you will ensure the team is productive, happy, and engaged. The role requires relationship-building skills, the ability to build credibility and influence within and outside the studio. You can also engage, lead, influence, and communicate meaningfully at all levels.

You'll help craft a strategy for the Madrid team, identify tactics, improve process, craft solutions, prioritize and measure the success of your team's work. You'll keep aligned with project DDs and partner closely with stakeholders across North America and other parts the world.
Outcomes will include successfully managing to project on-time predictability and quality targets, budgets while achieving established goals and targets.

This is a role with a great opportunity to build a team from scratch and then help them deliver the biggest sports games in the world. You will be helping team learn as they deliver, partnering to drive strategy, and creating an environment that constantly improves our execution.

Who you are
• An empathetic and inclusive people leader, making people in your teams feel seen and heard.
• You have a track record of developing and growing teams.
• You're comfortable in communicating and influencing at all levels.
• Comfortable in ambiguity.
• Experienced in career management.
• Used to working with different cultures and time zones.
• A good understanding of art production for video games.
• 5+ years of experience in project management.

What you'll do
• Strategy
• Craft a yearly strategy for location and execute against it.
• Align with Service team, External Development, and other titles to foster a global approach.
• Partnership
• Ensure mutual trust is as high as possible with our partners.
• Monitor relationship with our partners through qualitative and quantitative KPIs.
• Initiate specific initiatives to get the team closer (team building, new project set-up proposal, etc.)
• Operations:
• Ensure team is set-up to exceed project goals (quality/efficiency/cost).
• Accountable for projects deliveries to game teams.
• Review, align, and improve processes.
• Partner with stakeholders to ensure quality is meeting project requirements.
• Ensure projects have the best resource mix/set-up.
• Key stakeholder in hiring process.
• Culture
• Ensure teams are engaged and happy.
• Create long term training plans (aligned with partners, projects, and strategy).
• Foster our culture by setting a good example.
• Career management of team members on- and offsite.

Where you'll be
• For this role, it needs to be on-site (or hybrid) in Madrid, Spain.
• We offer a flexible working situation, but we think you'll want to spend most of your time in the office initially.

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Jobcode: Reference SBJ-r1bx8m-3-16-70-101-42 in your application.