About the role
WE ARE GAME MAKERS
Who We Are:
- Diverse team of developers driven by a passion for art, united by core values, and inspired by a culture of inclusivity to build amazing games that thrill players everywhere.
- Pursue growth and innovation in an environment of safety and trust.
- Culture built on the belief that varied voices in the collective strengthen the team and games.
- Looking for the next teammate to raise the bar and make the team better.
What We Need:
- Seeking a senior external development leader to own how 31st Union works with external partners (what is sent out, who it is sent to, how it comes back, and quality upon return).
- Set external development strategy in partnership with the Head of Operations and studio leadership.
- Build the designed system, including pipelines, trackers, briefs, review loops, and onboarding paths that partnerships run on.
- Role combines strategy ownership with hands-on production ownership.
- Act as the person in the room when deciding what is viable to outsource on a AAA project.
- Write trackers, fix brief templates, and chase access tickets.
- Partner closely with Production to work out how to resource and schedule external work.
- Partner with Art Direction and discipline leads to ensure feedback reaching vendor teams is specific, consistent, and actionable.
- First-in-seat role with no existing external development team to inherit; building a team as the slate grows is part of the job.
What You'll Do:
External Development Strategy:
- Partner with Head of Operations and studio leadership to set and evolve the external development strategy: which disciplines are viable to send out, which partnership model fits each (asset vendor, embedded team, full co-development), and what is deliberately kept in-house.
- Draft internal-versus-external business cases behind those calls rather than presenting them as instinct.
Pipeline & Workflow Ownership:
- Design, implement, and maintain tools, systems, workflows, and operational policies that external development runs on in partnership with domain leaders.
- Includes brief and outsourcing pack templates, asset trackers, review protocols, acceptance criteria, onboarding documentation, and reporting standards.
Partner Sourcing & Commercial Management:
- Lead the RFP process, vendor outreach, portfolio and evaluation, and partner selection.
- Negotiate scope, capacity, cost, and delivery expectations against project goals and budget.
- Own the lifecycle of each partnership in collaboration with internal stakeholders: contracts and amendments with Legal and Procurement, invoices, renewals and expirations, offboarding, and onboarding.
- Drive IT and information security escalations to resolution so partners are productive quickly and safely.
Budget & Forecasting:
- Manage the studio's external development budget and forecast process in partnership with the Operations team.
- Model cost against capacity, identify where spend buys the most value, review deliverables against contractual criteria before milestone payments release, and bring cost-efficiency options to leadership proactively.
Production Partnership:
- Work with Production and discipline leads to determine how to produce external development: identify capacity gaps, sequence external work against internal milestones, and balance workload across internal teams and external partners.
- Ensure external schedules and internal plans are aligned.
Creative Partnership & Quality Oversight:
- Partner with Art Direction, craft owners, and discipline leads to define creative briefs, style guides, benchmark assets, and quality bars before production starts.
- Build and run the review cadence that gets vendor work in front of the right internal eyes on time, ensuring outgoing direction is actionable.
- Protect Art Directors' review time by establishing a technical and visual pre-screen process.
- Keep the loop tight enough that a partner's team improves over the course of an engagement.
Delivery Oversight, Risk & Reporting:
- Build and manage vendor production schedules, monitor milestone health across the full slate of partnerships, and proactively mitigate risk from schedule, budget, or scope drift by bringing problems forward early with options attached.
- Own the external development database and reporting standards.
- Report vendor KPIs, capacity, spend, and delivery trends to studio leadership and publisher stakeholders in actionable terms.
Building The Function & The Bench:
- Grow external development from a function of one into a team as the slate requires, including headcount recommendations, structure, and career pathing.
- Mentor and calibrate team members managing external engagements across disciplines, regardless of reporting lines.
Who You Are:
- A Strategist Who Still Builds: Capable of holding a multi-year view of the partner portfolio and opening a spreadsheet the same afternoon. Not looking for a role where work arrives pre-scoped, nor one where you only build other people's plans. You want both and understand the difference.
- An Operator With Commercial Teeth: Experienced in running RFPs, negotiating SOWs and rates, and owning a budget rather than reporting on one. Comfortable saying no to a partner and explaining to a lead why a cheaper bid is a more expensive decision.
- Grounded In The Craft: Able to distinguish between a vendor skill gap, a brief gap, and a process gap before writing feedback. Understands the purpose of a style guide, a benchmark asset, and why a technical constraint agreed in week one saves a month in week twelve.
- A Collaborator, A Diplomat, And A Developer Of People: Acts as the bridge between internal leads wanting perfection, production wanting adherence to dates, and partner teams across time zones wanting clear answers. Conveys complex creative feedback clearly and diplomatically (often to non-native English speakers) and manages communication windows. Articulates both the "what" and the "why" to your team and partners, treating vendors as capabilities to be grown rather than capacity to be bought.
- Comfortable In The "Gray" Areas: Thrives in a function that does not fully exist yet. Comfortable shaping new processes and adjusting them as the department evolves, preferring to establish standards rather than wait for them.
- Tooling:
- Strong working knowledge of Jira and ShotGrid/Flow.
- Spreadsheet and data fluency sufficient to build reporting independently.
- Familiarity with Perforce or equivalent source control.
- Understanding of how assets are integrated into a live engine build.
- Level of Experience: 6 to 8+ years of external development or production experience in the video game industry, with a track record of running external development across multiple projects or a full franchise and real budget ownership.
Bonus Points:
- Experience standing up an external development or outsourcing function from scratch.
- Experience with global partners across multiple time zones and cultures, including studios in Eastern Europe, South America, or Asia.
- Familiarity with publisher-side production and cross-studio coordination.
- Hands-on background in one of the outsourced disciplines: art, animation, audio, engineering, or QA.
Compensation and Benefits:
- Pay Range: Expected to be between $103,700 and $153,500 per year in California at the start of employment.
- Pay Factors: Base pay is based on market location and may vary further depending on individualized factors such as job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and other objective business considerations.
- Total Compensation: May include a bonus and/or equity awards, alongside a full range of medical, financial, and other benefits for regular roles. Temporary or intern roles are not eligible for many of these payments or benefits.
- Employment Type: At-will position; the company reserves the right to modify base salary and any other discretionary payment, compensation, or benefit program at any time based on individual performance, company/department/team performance, and market factors.