Development Director - NHL
EA SPORTS is one of the leading sports entertainment brands in the world, with top-selling videogame franchises, award-winning interactive technology, fan programs, and cross-platform digital experiences. EA SPORTS creates connected experiences that ignite the emotion of sport through industry-leading sports video games, including Madden NFL football, EA Sports FC, NHL® hockey, NBA LIVE basketball, and EA SPORTS UFC.
EA SPORTS NHL franchise is founded on passion and new ideas. Located in Vancouver, British Columbia, the team is composed of remarkable talent on a mission to accomplish on-ice experiences that connect gamers around the world through play. If you're a creative pioneer with experience with your craft, you will have the chance to turn a job into something you love.
We are looking for a Development Director to lead the delivery of complex, highly technical programs across one of our game development teams while also supporting tool development for the wider organization. This role is hybrid and located in Vancouver, British Columbia. Reporting to the Lead Development Director for NHL, you'll also collaborate with operational and project management individuals to ensure consistency and smooth daily execution.
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. They will fundamentally shape how our organization operates efficiently at scale.
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.