Responsibilities
- Partner with the Executive Producer and Technical Director to provide leadership and oversight across a portfolio of projects within the External Development business unit.
- Help establish, communicate, and maintain creative intentions and appropriate quality bars across ports, remasters, live service initiatives, and co-development projects.
- Drive creative and product due diligence for new partner opportunities, evaluating gameplay, presentation, user experience, modernization opportunities, production complexity, and quality expectations to inform proposals, staffing strategies, and project planning.
- Evaluate project roadmaps, feature plans, and major initiatives to ensure teams are pursuing the highest-value opportunities within schedule and budget constraints.
- Work with project leadership teams to identify risks, uncover gaps in planning, and support mitigation strategies.
- Help teams decompose complex creative, gameplay, UX, technical, and production challenges into clear initiatives, ownership structures, dependencies, and measurable outcomes.
- Collaborate with Design, Art, UI/UX, Engineering, Production, and Technical Art teams to align quality expectations and delivery strategies.
- Support teams in evaluating trade-offs between quality, scope, schedule, cost, and player value.
- Facilitate alignment between clients, project leadership, and development teams regarding priorities, scope, quality expectations, and execution plans.
- Participate in project reviews, milestone planning, roadmap discussions, and quality assessments across the business unit.
- Help establish scalable frameworks, planning methodologies, and best practices that improve consistency across projects.
- Support project leaders and multidisciplinary teams by providing guidance on prioritization, initiative structuring, quality evaluation, and solution development.
- Communicate recommendations, risks, dependencies, and strategic considerations clearly to internal and external stakeholders.
- Contribute to the long-term growth and maturity of the business unit through leadership, mentorship, and continuous improvement initiatives.
Requirements
- Significant experience leading product, creative, design, or development teams within commercial game development, with a track record of influencing project direction and delivery.
- Shipped multiple titles and understand the realities of balancing player experience, quality, scope, schedule, and budget.
- Experience working with external publishing partners or within co-development and partner-led production environments.
- Strong product judgement, with the ability to evaluate competing creative and development priorities and make pragmatic recommendations that maximise player and business value.
- Experience working effectively across Design, Art, UI/UX, Engineering, Production, and QA, building alignment between disciplines with differing priorities.
- The ability to analyse complex project challenges, identify underlying causes, and help teams develop clear, actionable solutions.
- Experience reviewing roadmaps, production plans, and feature proposals, with the confidence to challenge assumptions and improve project direction.
- Experience presenting recommendations and influencing decision-making with project leadership, studio leadership, and partners.
- Excellent communication, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills, with a collaborative leadership style that enables teams to succeed rather than directing through authority.
- A passion for mentoring project leaders, improving development practices, and raising the overall quality and maturity of multidisciplinary teams.
- The ability to operate comfortably at both strategic and project leadership levels, contributing to business unit planning while supporting projects through day-to-day decision-making.
Nice to Have
- Experience leading or contributing to ports, remasters, remakes, franchise modernization, or live service projects.
- Experience working within external development or co-development production environments.
- Experience as an Art Director, Creative Director, Game Director, Design Director, Development Director, or Product Lead on shipped titles.
- Experience supporting business development activities, including opportunity assessment, project pitches, or RFP responses.
- Experience evaluating legacy titles and identifying opportunities to modernize gameplay, visuals, user experience, accessibility, or technical features while preserving the identity of the original game.
- Experience developing studio-wide frameworks, review processes, planning methodologies, or quality standards that improve consistency across multiple projects.
- Experience across multiple genres, platforms, engines, or business models, including AAA, AA, mobile, PC, console, or live operations.
- An active interest in industry trends, player expectations, and evolving best practices in game design, accessibility, user experience, and franchise development.
Additional Information
- Studio operates as a remote-first workplace, offering flexible work arrangements.
- Only able to hire candidates who are legally eligible to work in Canada and reside within Canada.
