Director of Core Development

Key Accountabilities:

Accountable and Responsible for roadmap development execution; Production is Responsible for delivery planning and tracking.

Accountable and Responsible for live handover readiness; Live Service is Responsible for sign-off.

Responsible for delivery against KPIs on roadmap features, building to design and to quality, under Game Director accountability for design and Product accountability for outcome.

Responsible for roadmap delivery status and risk in senior forums, under Production accountability.

Roadmap Feature Development:

Own the development of roadmap features, new systems, quality-of-life work and tentpole content from greenlight through to live handover.

Build the development rhythm that moves long-term work forward: milestones, reviews, playable builds and quality gates.

Hold the line on long-term work against the constant pull of live priorities, surfacing to the EP when roadmap capacity is being eroded.

Own the handover standard: nothing transfers to the live game without operational documentation, tuning levers and live-readiness sign-off from Live Service.

Platform and Systems Investment:

Own platform investment, architecture improvement and foundational systems work in partnership with the Tech Director, who runs the engineering organisation.

Hold functional priority for the Game Development Engineering stream, directing what it builds within the quarterly allocation.

Balance feature development against foundational investment so the roadmap does not ship on rotting infrastructure.

Discipline Leadership:

Lead the Core Development teams and grow the discipline's craft, development methodology and quality standards.

Build and protect the operating rhythms (milestone reviews, playtests, greenlight gates) that keep long-term work honest and visible.

People Leadership:

Line-manage the Development Leads and senior development staff, owning their objectives, performance, growth and career development.

Run the people rhythms across the group: regular 1:1s, performance reviews and calibration.

Own workforce planning for Core Development: team structure, hiring plans and succession for key roles.

Recruit, retain and mentor senior development talent, holding a healthy culture and a sustainable pace across long-horizon work.

Cross-Functional Partnership:

Partner with the Game Director to turn design solutions into built, tested, shippable features, holding development quality and milestone honesty while Game Direction holds the creative bar.

Partner with the Director of Product on roadmap shape and sequencing, delivering each initiative as scoped and surfacing early when the build evidence says the bet is not working.

Mirror the Director of Live Service, owning what is coming next while they own the game as it runs, meeting at the handover and feeding live learnings back into the build.

Work with the Director of Production on delivery planning, capacity, sequencing, and QA and release readiness for what Core Development builds, owning the development itself within that frame.

Integrate Art, UX and Tech craft throughout development rather than at the end, building to each craft lead's bar.