Development Director, EA SPORTS FC Gameplay

Please note: This is a hybrid role located in Vancouver, B.C., with an expectation of working in the office three days per week.

The Role

Reporting to the Lead Development Director, the Gameplay Development Director (DD) leads a multidisciplinary team responsible for delivering key areas of the on-pitch experience in EA SPORTS FC.

Gameplay brings together Engineering, Animation, Game Design, Production, and Quality Verification to develop the systems, features, tuning, and technology that determine how the game feels, responds, and plays. As a Gameplay DD, you will directly manage team members across Engineering, Animation, and Game Design, while partnering closely with discipline leaders to support craft excellence, career development, and effective team composition.

You will be accountable for both the people leadership and delivery health of your team. This includes establishing clear priorities, translating product goals into executable plans, balancing scope against capacity, managing dependencies and risks, and creating an environment where individuals and teams can do their best work.

Success in this role requires strong multidisciplinary leadership, an ability to bring structure and clarity to complex or ambiguous situations, and the judgment to balance product quality, team health, development timelines, and longer-term organizational needs. You will be expected to stay close to the work, understand the challenges facing the team, and actively remove obstacles that affect delivery or employee effectiveness.

As a people manager, you will set clear expectations, provide regular coaching and feedback, support career development, manage performance, and foster an inclusive and accountable team culture. You will work with Engineering, Animation, and Game Design leadership to ensure employees receive the appropriate craft support while maintaining clear ownership of their overall performance, growth, and day-to-day experience.

You will also serve as a key operational partner to Gameplay leadership, providing visibility into priorities, progress, quality, risks, dependencies, staffing needs, and decisions. Working with creative, technical, production, and quality leaders, you will help position the Gameplay organization to deliver a responsive, authentic, and high-quality football experience.

The team operates in a hybrid model, working onsite in Vancouver three days per week: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Responsibilities

• Lead a multidisciplinary Gameplay team that includes employees from Engineering, Animation, and Game Design.

• Manage the performance, development, engagement, and day-to-day experience of your direct reports, including setting expectations, providing feedback, supporting career growth, and addressing performance concerns.

• Partner with Engineering, Animation, and Game Design discipline leaders to align on employee development, craft expectations, staffing needs, and longer-term capability building.

• Own the planning and delivery outcomes for your assigned Gameplay area, ensuring that scope, capacity, priorities, quality, and execution are aligned with product and franchise objectives.

• Translate creative and technical goals into clear, achievable development plans with defined milestones, dependencies, ownership, and success criteria.

• Partner with Gameplay Producers, Designers, Technical Directors, Animation Directors, and Quality Verification leaders to establish priorities and maintain alignment across disciplines.

• Balance the needs of current-title support, future releases, and longer-term Gameplay initiatives, identifying trade-offs when available capacity does not support the full scope of work.

• Monitor team health and delivery performance, proactively identifying risks related to staffing, workload, dependencies, quality, decision-making, or execution.

• Lead milestone planning and readiness activities, maintaining visibility into feature completion, tuning, defect trends, validation plans, dependencies, and ship risks.

• Use player feedback, telemetry, playtesting insights, quality data, and team input to support prioritization and development decisions.

• Lead cross-functional initiatives that require coordination across Gameplay teams, partner organizations, studios, or disciplines.

• Establish and improve team operating practices, including planning, status reporting, risk management, dependency tracking, decision-making, and development reviews.

• Provide clear and concise updates to Gameplay leadership on progress, risks, mitigation plans, staffing needs, and decisions requiring support.

• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, inclusion, transparency, constructive feedback, and continuous improvement.

• Support workforce planning, hiring, onboarding, succession planning, and organizational changes within your area.

• Balance strategic planning with hands-on leadership, personally driving critical initiatives and helping the team resolve complex delivery or people challenges when needed.

Experience

• 8+ years of experience in game development, software development, production, project leadership, or a related field, including experience leading complex teams or programs.

• Experience directly managing employees, including goal setting, coaching, career development, performance assessment, and managing performance concerns.

• Experience leading multidisciplinary teams that include two or more of Engineering, Animation, Game Design, Production, or Quality Verification.

• Strong understanding of the game development lifecycle and the collaboration required to deliver player-facing features, systems, content, and technology.

• Proven ability to manage scope, capacity, schedules, dependencies, quality, and risk across multiple workstreams.

• Experience translating creative or technical objectives into structured and achievable execution plans.

• Demonstrated ability to build effective teams, improve ways of working, and create clarity in complex or ambiguous environments.

• Experience driving outcomes in a matrixed organization through influence, collaboration, and stakeholder alignment.

• Strong judgment and problem-solving skills, with the ability to balance product, delivery, people, and organizational considerations.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to facilitate difficult conversations and communicate effectively with senior leaders.

• Working knowledge of Agile, Lean, or other iterative game-development and continuous-improvement practices.

Bonus

• Experience working directly with Gameplay teams or systems such as controls, artificial intelligence, physics, animation, player movement, game balance, responsiveness, or competitive gameplay.

• Experience leading teams within a large-scale AAA game-development organization.

• Experience supporting an annualized sports franchise or another product that balances live-service commitments with future product development.

• Experience managing employees from different crafts or job disciplines.

• Experience using player feedback, telemetry, playtesting, and quality data to inform development decisions.

• Experience leading teams through finaling, launch readiness, live issue response, and post-launch updates.

• Experience working with globally distributed teams and stakeholders.

• Knowledge of EA SPORTS FC, football, and the broader sports-gaming landscape.

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional experience.