Description
About Splash Damage
We believe that games play better with friends. For more than 20 years, we've been creating team-based multiplayer experiences that have entertained tens of millions of players all over the world and forged countless new friendships along the way.
Our studio culture is rooted in our open, friendly, and collaborative environment. Our games are made by people from all over the world, from our entry-level Fresh Talent hires to industry veterans, and we believe that fostering that diverse culture is the best way to build both our games and our studio. We have won numerous awards, including a 'World-Class' accreditation by Best Companies and being named one of the UK's 100 Best Large Companies to work for.
Our offices are based in Bromley, UK.
Benefits
We offer a comprehensive benefits package for you and your family, including:
- Substantial performance-related pay system on top of your basic compensation, along with enhanced pension contributions and our life assurance scheme.
- 4 day work week: Tuesday - Friday
- 20 days of annual leave, equivalent to 5 weeks within a 4 day work week. Unused days can be sold or carried over at the end of the year.
- Summer & Winter closure, not taken from holiday allowance - 1st full week of August and Christmas Eve to New Years day.
- Bespoke VISA and relocation packages for you and your family, with support from our team throughout the whole process.
- Private Medical and Dental Cover for you and your family, along with a 24/7 digital GP service.
- Extensive Mental Health support, with Line Manager Mental Health training, a group of Mental Health First-Aiders, and on-site or remote counselling.
- Our bespoke Learning and Development course framework to help you grow as an employee, manager, and leader.
- Industry-leading fully paid 30 weeks maternity leave & 10 weeks paternity leave.
The Role As an External Development Manager, you will be responsible for diligently identifying suitable vendors across multiple disciplines in line with the needs of our projects throughout their development lifecycles. You are crucial in helping assess development situations across the projects and aiding development teams and stakeholders with their strategies for delivering high- quality, AAA, cost-effective deliverables through 3rd party partners.
Your role is to help drive, implement, and improve processes, methods, workflows, and tools to deliver scope outside the internal game team's capabilities. You will assist in tracking progress against the game team's milestone goals and ensuring both the internal and external teams are fully
aligned throughout development.
You strive to build long-term relationships through clear two-way communication and trust, with engagements that will make the external development experience positive for all parties involved. You will be a confident decision- maker, often making impartial decisions through sometimes difficult situations and scenarios. You will aid in championing external development on behalf of the studio, helping to set up processes, and educating teams on the short- and long- term benefits of external development.
Responsibilities Vendor Relationships - You will be responsible for relationship management with our external partners across the business.
- You are diligent in the basic vetting of new partners, working alongside o peration departments (PMO, Legal, Finance and IT) and reviewing our current partners' performance and customer satisfaction.
- You will find potential partner opportunities for our organisation, build and maintain a vendor database across all disciplines, and assist with keeping an up-to-date record of our preferred/trusted external partners - including rates per discipline.
Consultation & Education - You will source suitable vendors for our project needs as part of the partner selection process.
- You will help coordinate game teams and operation departments with the necessary paperwork in place before an engagement commences.
- You will be process-driven and set up all development workflows and processes with external development baked in.
- You educate and coach our game teams in external development.
- You know which project management methodologies (Agile, Kanban, and Waterfall) are more suited to different engagements.
- You will understand engagement needs and can work alongside the game teams, suggesting suitable vendors, availability, and capacity.
- You will work with our game teams to establish expected quality bars per discipline, which our vendors are expected to deliver against.
Engagement Management - You will assist our game teams in ensuring they are organised with each stage of external development, from onboarding to providing feedback in a timely fashion.
- You ensure review & feedback loops for all external engagements are running smoothly and course correct, as needed.
- You will work alongside our game teams, aiding in planning, scheduling, and establishing a schedule to complete deliverables to ensure the project's key dates are upheld.
- You will understand the basic process of maintaining and driving external capacity planning and be able to articulate to the team to help inform their decisions.
- You will proactively identify and resolve risks for the game team and vendor pipeline.
- You will ensure all external engagement review/feedback loops run smoothly and course-correct as needed.
Business Development - You understand the contractual and financial elements of each external engagement/relationship we have in place.
- You aid in providing insights into market research and industry trends alongside any reports or analyses that might be requested.
- You will gain an understanding of each Operation Department's systems and processes and bake them into External Development workflows.
Essential Skills and Experience - Minimum of 5 years in a similar role.
- Previous experience working with external partners.
- Great attention to detail; strong verbal and written communication skills; and the ability to convey thoughts clearly and logically.
- Experience with Microsoft Office 365 suite (Excel, Word, PowerPoint), Jira, and Perforce.
- Willingness to travel when necessary.
- Ability to track and maintain budgets on a large scale.
Preferred Skills and Experience - Good technical understanding of game development pipelines and processes.
- In-depth understanding of game development life cycles.
- Previous experience working in a AAA game development studio.
- A strong passion for gaming.
Splash Damage is an equal-opportunity employer. We believe our teams create better work when they have a range of perspectives to draw from, and we are committed to creating an inclusive working environment that celebrates diversity.
