Electronic Arts

Contract: Permanent.

Location: Madrid.

Work Model: Hybrid.

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, EA SPORTS UFC and EA Sports College Football.

EA SPORTS ignited the passion of college football for millions of fans by recreating the unparalleled pageantry of college football with EA SPORTS College Football, which was a top five sports title in North America. In recent years, college football has become one of the most requested games from their players. Now, they're excited to bring back the glory of college football for millions of college sports fans with EA SPORTS College Football. And with this anticipated title under development, EA SPORTS is looking for a diverse range of talent, who are passionate about what they do.

The Engineering Tech Lead is a key member of the team and critical to the game creation process. The tech lead continues to be very much involved on all technical aspects of the process (including architectural design, implementation, and debugging on multiple platforms) but applies their technical expertise also in helping structure, coordinate and drive a team of high performing engineers towards the delivery of best-in-class experience in the very complex and dynamic environment that videogame development presents. 

The Engineering Tech lead is responsible for all technical aspects of our projects, while constantly interacting with Designers, Artists and other Engineers in multiple domains (i.e. - rendering, gameplay, audio, user interface, online, physics, databases and tools) to solve complex technical problems and develop great interactive entertainment experiences.

As a Technical Lead, you will take pride on the work you and your team develop, as well as on how that work is developed. Quality and performance are up the upmost importance and that extends to your ability to develop a high performing development team that operates with a high degree of predictability and reliability. 

You will partner with our Operational, Production, Design and Art leads to ensure the smooth work across all disciplines and the delivery of our experiences to our players, within the specific project constraints.

Your Responsibilities

• Lead a group of highly qualified individuals, becoming responsible for all technical aspects of the project from initial design, architecture and implementation, all the way to its delivery, launch and operation.
• Partner and be heavily involved in aspects of game making towards the creation of solid design, technical briefs, development plans and ultimately successful launch and operations. Partners include Designers, producers, project managers, etc.
• Multi-year, franchise-wide design, adoption and development of technical plans and roadmaps, including active involvement with the establishment of a high-performance engineering team.
• Main point of contact for all technical aspects of your team / pod. Responsible for the implementation of all committed deliverables and the technical solutions required during the project
• Integration and contribution to larger technical initiatives and cross-product implementations.
• Conduct Code reviews and develop Technical Design Documents and briefs.
• Active participation in efforts to develop your career and that of others around you.

Your Qualifications

• 10+ years experience of software development either in games or another highly technical industry - ideally working on Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo game consoles or other embedded systems. We are looking for a highly technically qualified individual that inspires others.
• Experience working as a technical leader with evidence of the impact you have had on your team, development processes and product.
• Highly skilled / proficient with C++ programming. An eventual technical domain knowledge will be required as the basis for your lead role and, hands-on programming (C++) will continue to be part of your role (~40-50%).
• Experienced working with 3rd party software APIs. Deep understanding of the API model and all its performance / timing implications.
• Strong knowledge of Json, XML and writing/reviewing Tech Design documents and briefs.
• Experience with Visual Studio and deep knowledge of the debugging tools.
• Experience with source control systems.
• Work with people on a large international team both locally and remotely.
• Comfortable operating in an English-speaking environment. You don’t have to be perfectly fluent but capable of easily comprehending and communicating your ideas. We can help you improve but we need a good foundation.
• Experienced working, if not in the videogame industry, in highly complex development environment with global users, dynamic project conditions and relatively high levels of uncertainty.
• A leader. Confident communication and not shy to lead a team of engineers in complex environments by developing a vision and motivating results. 
• A team player that also enjoys coaching and helping others succeed.
• Ideally a gamer, someone that understand the passion and connections that interactive entertainment can deliver and that is eager to be part of a team creating it. Extra bonus points if you like sports and ideally, American Football (or at least open to get into it).