Electronic Arts

External Development Director

EA Experiences

Our EA Experiences group is dedicated to ensuring great experiences for our growing communities centered around our world-renowned brands, including fan-favorites like Apex, Battlefield, EA SPORTS FC, Madden NFL and The Sims, just to name a few. We're a multi-functional group, with world-class expertise building fandoms, driving interactive storytelling, and positioning our franchises at the center of the broader entertainment ecosystem. We inspire, connect, and engage fans through culturally relevant content, intentionally architected journeys across channels, and meaningful fan care. Our goal is to provide valuable, easy experiences that fans love – in our games, around our games, and through innovative adjacent experiences to grow and enrich how fans experience EA as we shape the future of entertainment.

Fan Growth

EA’s Fan Growth organization is responsible for elevating the experiences customers get from our entertainment and maximizing their fun. We’re obsessed with the experiences our fans have with EA. We value people who bring new ideas and perspectives to make Fan Growth a great place to be and be from. We celebrate inclusion. It’s just as important for us to create great experiences for our people as for our players. We’re looking for people who will show up excited to work and ready for fun.

Summary

The External Development Director leads our external production strategy.. This role is responsible for scaling our global outsourcing capabilities, ensuring our vendor ecosystem is operationally sound, secure, and creatively aligned with EA’s quality standards. You’ll partner closely with Production, Tech, and Creative teams to streamline vendor onboarding, optimize asset pipelines, and expand external capacity to meet growing content demands. This is a hybrid role with three days a week in office. You will report to the Director of Production Operations and Technology. 

Responsibilities:

• Lead and scale the External Development function across content production, managing a global network of vendors supporting creative, production, and technical pipelines.

• Oversee vendor activation and governance, ensuring partners meet EA's security, compliance, and workflow standards.

• Collaborate with Production, Tech, and Legal teams to simplify vendor onboarding, troubleshoot integration issues, and reduce activation timelines.

• Oversee I/O management, ensuring asset delivery, feedback loops, and approvals flow between our teams and external partners.

• Establish and improve workflows across tools like Frame.io, Airtable, and asset management systems to improve visibility, efficiency, and accountability.

• Partner with Creative and Production leadership to forecast outsourcing needs, balance internal vs. external resourcing, and support capacity planning.

• Report performance and capacity metrics to senior leadership, identifying areas for efficiency gains, cost optimization, and process improvements.

• Identify bottlenecks and design scalable systems to improve delivery speed and quality.

• Mentor the External Development team, promoting a culture of collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement.

Qualifications:

• 6+ years of production experience in games, VFX, or creative content, with experience managing external vendors

• Experience with vendor management, contract workflows, and content security requirements.

• Experience working with creative production tools and DCC applications (e.g., Unreal Engine, Maya, Photoshop, Motion Builder, Frostbite, Frame.io).

• Proven success building or scaling external development teams or programs across multiple franchises or product lines.

• Exceptional communication and relationship management skills—able to bridge creative, technical, and operational teams.