Development Director - SEED

SEED is a cross-disciplinary R&D team within EA Worldwide Studios. Our mission is to explore, build, and help define the future of interactive entertainment.

SEED’s research targets meaningful areas of applied innovation that can be expressed directly in new player experiences, future connected services, and advanced development techniques. Our research horizon looks two to four years ahead and beyond. Our projects target specific game needs but with an eye towards solutions that can benefit all games.

SEED also exists to educate, share, and be great partners. We collaborate with game teams and industry partners, and we publish and present our research within our industry and to the public.

We are hiring for a Development Director for the SEED team reporting directly to the Programs Development Director of Technology Growth, to help manage our internal Research & Development activities.This exciting and dynamic role will partner with a wide array of team members across all of Tech Growth and our partners.

Responsibilities

• You will support the SEED applied research team through scheduling, tracking and reporting of activities at a macro level, including scope, progress and capacity.
• You will guide the research and development processes for the research team.
• You will develop research roadmaps and milestone deliverables by collaborating with Department leads and producers. Ensure other department dependencies are accounted for.
• You will be the source of truth for all things research process and progress and ensure any changes affecting other departments are swiftly communicated.
• You will raise project risks to the production team and project leadership and oversee the resolution.
• Facilitate productive meetings by guiding the conversation towards actionable items. Communicate the outcome of these meetings to any members involved and convert any action items to tasks to be assigned out.
• Identify and help alleviate any discrepancies between department schedules and productivity towards milestones.
• You will facilitate collaboration between the game teams, our partner teams, and the internal team.
• Constantly evaluate and iterate to improve research and development processes.
• You will collect and report on team KPIs
• You will run our team's Agile processes, adjusting to suit each project sub-team.
• You will support company wide innovation events.

Qualifications

• Technical skills
• 5+ years of project management experience in a software development or other technical environment.
• Experience running Agile processes in a team using Agile, Kanban, Lean, or another similar methodology.
• Experience managing partner expectations around delivery, scope, and timelines. Comfortable working directly with partners to plan project deliveries.
• Experience using Jira or similar project management tools.
• Soft skills
• Work directly with partners in planning, evaluating risks, and working collaboratively on delivery outcomes.
• Contribute to our team's inclusive and psychologically safe culture.
• Comfortable giving difficult feedback to help the team learn.
• Enthusiastic about keeping up to date on new ideas in the industry and bringing those ideas to the team to help us improve.