Senior External Development Manager at 2K Games in San Mateo, CA

Job description

WE ARE GAME MAKERS Who We Are: We are a diverse team of developers driven by a passion for our art, united by our core values and inspired by a culture of inclusivity to build amazing games that thrill players everywhere. We pursue growth and innovation in an environment of safety and trust. Our culture is built on the belief that the more varied voices in our collective will strengthen our team and our games. We are looking for our next teammate who will raise our bar and make us better. What We Need: We are seeking a senior external development leader to own how 31st Union works with external partners: what we send out, who we send it to, how it comes back, and how good it is when it does. You will set our external development strategy in partnership with the Head of Operations and studio leadership, and then build the thing you designed, including the pipelines, trackers, briefs, review loops, and onboarding paths that our partnerships actually run on. This role combines strategy ownership with hands-on production ownership . You are the person in the room when we decide what is viable to outsource on our AAA project. You are also the person who writes the tracker, fixes the brief template, and chases the access ticket. You will partner closely with Production to work out how we resource and schedule external work, and with Art Direction and our discipline leads to make sure the feedback reaching a vendor's team is specific, consistent, and actionable. This is a first-in-seat role. There is no external development team to inherit, and building one as our 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 our external development strategy: which disciplines are viable to send out, which partnership model fits each (asset vendor, embedded team, full co-development), and what we deliberately keep in house. Draft the internal-versus-external business cases behind those calls rather than presenting them as instinct. Pipeline & Workflow Ownership: Design, implement, and maintain the tools, systems, workflows, and operational policies that external development runs on in partnership with our domain leaders, including brief and outsourcing pack templates, asset trackers, review protocols, acceptance criteria, onboarding documentation, and the reporting standards behind all of it. Partner Sourcing & Commercial Management: Lead the RFP process, vendor outreach, portfolio and evaluation, as well as 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, including driving 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 is buying us the most, review deliverables against contractual criteria before milestone payments release, and bring cost-efficiency options to leadership before you are asked for them. Production Partnership: Work with Production and discipline leads to determine how we actually produce external development: where the capacity gaps are, how external work is sequenced against internal milestones, and how workload is balanced across our internal teams and our external partners. Make sure 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, an