Outsourcing Manager (Creative Design)
Respawn Entertainment is looking for an experienced and highly skilled Outsourcing Manager to lead and drive our global outsourcing efforts. The position will be responsible for establishing and managing multiple external vendor partnerships supporting a portfolio games in collaboration with studio art, production and technology teams. Role will be tasked with implementing and supporting workflows for asset delivery and integration and ensuring efficiency while still maintaining a high level of quality and craftsmanship for assets developed for our titles.
Ideal candidate is someone with many skills and talents. First, you have exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, working to foster creative and collaborative relationships with external vendors and our internal teams. Second, your organization skills and attention to detail are top-notch ensuring schedules, work orders, budgets and milestones are clear, accurate and aligned with all stakeholders. Third, you are a driver for efficiency and improvement in our process and workflows. We are looking for someone who will improve our output and performance capabilities to make great games to our fans. Fourth, you are engaged, rational and thoughtful in how you work with internal artists, producers and engineers ensuring priorities are met and risks mitigated. Fifth, you love games and enjoy the types of games made at Respawn. We put tremendous time and effort into each of our games and want this candidate to be inspired by it and motivated by being a member of this team.
What's it like to be the Studio Outsourcing Manager at Respawn?
- Day to Day - As the studio's central Art Outsourcing Manager, you will handle the full outsourcing process for multiple games. Outsourced work may include art assets, animation, engineering, and more. You will liaise between the internal development teams and external outsourcing partners, manage contracts with vendors and individual contributors, and collaborate with central corporate resources such as accounting, finance and legal departments. You role may include R&D in terms of seeking new partners to build relationships with, as well as iterating on pipeline to raise the bar and streamline our processes. You will help ensure that outsourced deliverables meet schedule deadlines and will help manage work orders and contracts. You will use your good judgement and problem solving skills to raise flags and seek solutions for any issues in regards to schedule or quality. As an integral member of the team, you will ensure that our outsourcing efforts are delivering on expectations and look for ways to improve upon our current processes. Your role may also require travel at times to visit our partners on-site at their respective locations worldwide.
- Ownership - We believe our team members perform their best when they have ownership over their work. As the central studio Outsourcing Manager, you will have direct influence on pipelines and the overall outsourcing processes for multiple games. You will have the opportunity to scale the overall outsourcing efforts and well as help build out the outsourcing team. Your role will include staying abreast of the Studio's needs, ensuring quality, reasonable schedules, solid pipelines, and pulling it all together to nurture a well running system. As part of a small, focused team you will have the opportunity to shine here.
- Teamwork - An important aspect of your role will be building and nurturing relationships with current and potential outsourcing partners. You will collaborate closely with talented people within development and production, as well as external vendors. Delivering the best gaming experience for our players is a group effort, and your working relationships with others will matter greatly..
- Values - Our team members are aligned on our Studio Values. They share their inspiration, knowledge, and passion with the others on the team. They aspire to treat everything they work on as a personal masterpiece. They play the game and are encouraged to speak up if they see anything that is not up to our high standards. You will have the opportunity to invest your time and passion in what will have the biggest payoff for our team members and our players.
- Growth - At Respawn we believe that all of our team members are on a path of professional development, and making progress in that journey is a key component of happiness and satisfaction in one's work. Our team members are encouraged to follow their career interests, while also challenging themselves. To facilitate this, our leads work with each team member to identify areas of strength, and areas of desired development, and whenever possible, assign tasks and projects which will inspire the team member to grow in skill, knowledge, and capability.
What do we look for in Outsourcing Manager candidates?
- Professional Expertise - We are looking for candidates who have relevant skills in handling and leading outsourcing efforts on large-scale video game projects and preferably supporting Live Service games. We'd love to meet someone who has managed outsourcing pipelines with multiple vendors across various disciplines. We are looking for problem solvers who enjoy managing a variety of tasks that require detail-orientation in a dynamic environment. Ideally this person has experience managing outsourcing schedules, budgets, contracts, and work orders, and understands the art creation pipeline from both the creative and technical side in order to understand and communicate needs effectively with relevant colleagues.
- Passion - You'll do your best work if you enjoy supporting creative endeavors and helping drive quality and excellence. We look for people who are passionate across all of our disciplines - our team members are constantly sharing knowledge and working to raise the quality bar. No one is phoning it in here – our teams love what they do and it shows in our games.
- Potential Over Experience – We value talent over years of experience. Experience counts, but potential is important too. We look for talented, highly motivated people with a passion for quality.
- Teamplayer – Positivity and a great attitude help to fuel greatness. The ability to accept feedback and critiques will help you tailor your work to reach its best potential. Teamwork is very important to our success!
Ideally, you also will have…
Several years of experience managing high volume outsourcing efforts with multiple partners, ideally for game development.
Ability to grasp and communicate artistic, technical and creative needs and provide thoughtful recommendations and solutions.
Experience with development pipelines and asset management.
Experience with production related tracking software such as Jira or Shotgun.
Excellence in communication and follow up.
Experience managing budgets and communicating financial terms and needs.
The ability to communicate effectively and to build successful interpersonal relationships with discipline partners across organizations.
A proactive, self-starter spirit and ability to work both independently and on a team without micromanagement.
Passion for video games is a plus!
If this opportunity sounds like a great fit for you, please submit your resume and we will get back to you once we have reviewed.