Development Director - NHL
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Key skills for this role
About the Role
EA SPORTS seeks a Development Director to lead delivery of complex technical programs for the NHL franchise, including AI capabilities. You will manage cross-functional teams, define roadmaps, and drive sprint planning.
Key Skills for This Role
Responsibilities
- Lead end to end delivery of large scale technical projects including AI capability and efficiency. Own scope, schedule, budget, and quality from kickoff through release.
- Provide strong career management to direct reports, identifying growth opportunities, setting clear expectations, and actively developing individuals toward their full potential.
- Define and maintain technical project roadmaps, translating complex engineering requirements into clear milestones, dependencies, and delivery plans.
- Drive sprint planning processes, ensuring the team adheres to Waterfall principles while continuously improving planning rigor and execution discipline.
- Identify, assess, and proactively mitigate technical and project risks, removing blockers, resolving ambiguities, and escalating where appropriate.
- Partner with engineering leads and AI/ML teams to ensure technical feasibility, sound design decisions, and alignment with organizational strategy.
- Establish and track clear KPIs and delivery metrics, surfacing progress, variances, and risks to senior stakeholders.
- Anticipate bottlenecks, provide management escalation, project prioritization, make tradeoffs, balance the needs versus technical constraints, and promote initial partner deployments.
- Promote a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement across the teams you oversee.
- Collaborate with Product and Technical leads to define and assign sprint tasks from quarterly goals, using Jira/Jaas to maintain visibility and accountability.
Requirements
- 6+ years of project management experience, with a strong focus on highly technical projects and AI efficiencies.
- 3+ years of team leadership experience, including direct people management and career development of technical staff.
- Experience leading complex, multi workstream projects from start to finish.
- Familiarity with AI/ML development lifecycles and the unique delivery challenges of building intelligent systems.
- Proficiency with Agile and hybrid project management methodologies, with experience facilitating sprint planning, retrospectives, and quarterly goal setting.
- Exceptional stakeholder management, able to translate technical complexity for non technical audiences and vice versa.
- University degree (Bachelor's) in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience.
Full Job Posting
The Challenge Ahead
- The Development Director (DD) is responsible for driving the delivery of complex, highly technical projects from creation to completion.
- You will bring deep technical project management expertise and lead cross functional teams through the full lifecycle of sophisticated data and AI driven programs.
- In this role, you will spearhead a portfolio of cutting edge capabilities including emerging AI capabilities.
Your Responsibilities
- Lead end to end delivery of large scale technical projects including AI capability and efficiency. Own scope, schedule, budget, and quality from kickoff through release.
- Provide strong career management to direct reports, identifying growth opportunities, setting clear expectations, and actively developing individuals toward their full potential.
- Define and maintain technical project roadmaps, translating complex engineering requirements into clear milestones, dependencies, and delivery plans.
- Drive sprint planning processes, ensuring the team adheres to Waterfall principles while continuously improving planning rigor and execution discipline.
- Identify, assess, and proactively mitigate technical and project risks, removing blockers, resolving ambiguities, and escalating where appropriate.
- Partner with engineering leads and AI/ML teams to ensure technical feasibility, sound design decisions, and alignment with organizational strategy.
- Establish and track clear KPIs and delivery metrics, surfacing progress, variances, and risks to senior stakeholders.
- Anticipate bottlenecks, provide management escalation, project prioritization, make tradeoffs, balance the needs versus technical constraints, and promote initial partner deployments.
- Promote a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement across the teams you oversee.
- Collaborate with Product and Technical leads to define and assign sprint tasks from quarterly goals, using Jira/Jaas to maintain visibility and accountability.
Your Qualifications
- 6+ years of project management experience, with a strong focus on highly technical projects and AI efficiencies.
- 3+ years of team leadership experience, including direct people management and career development of technical staff.
- Experience leading complex, multi workstream projects from start to finish.
- Familiarity with AI/ML development lifecycles and the unique delivery challenges of building intelligent systems.
- Proficiency with Agile and hybrid project management methodologies, with experience facilitating sprint planning, retrospectives, and quarterly goal setting.
- Exceptional stakeholder management, able to translate technical complexity for non technical audiences and vice versa.
- University degree (Bachelor's) in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical field, or equivalent professional experience.
Pay Transparency North America
- British Columbia (depending on location e.g. Vancouver vs. Victoria) CAD 122,300 CAD 170,700 CAD.
- Pay is just one part of the overall compensation at EA.
- For Canada, we offer a package of benefits including vacation (3 weeks per year to start), 10 days per year of sick time, paid top up to EI/QPIP benefits up to 100% of base salary when you welcome a new child, extended health/dental/vision coverage, life insurance, disability insurance, retirement p
- Certain roles may also be eligible for bonus and equity.
Workplace
- This role is hybrid and located in Vancouver, British Columbia.
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