Senior Technical Lead - EA SPORTS NHL

About the Role

The Senior Technical Lead – Core Technology serves as the strategic technical leader for the foundational engineering domains of the NHL franchise, overseeing gameplay engineering, rendering, presentation, audio, and 3D art teams. As an extension of the Franchise Technical Director, this role is accountable for technical direction, long-term planning, cross-team alignment, and successful delivery across the technology stream. The role offers scope, influence, and meaningful impact, shaping the experience of millions of players annually.

Key Responsibilities

• Partner closely with the Franchise Technical Director to define and drive the long-term Core Technology roadmap, aligning technical direction with franchise and studio goals.
• Lead multi-year architectural and foundational initiatives spanning gameplay engineering, rendering, audio, presentation, and art technology.
• Make clear, high-impact technical decisions, balancing tradeoffs while identifying and mitigating risks early.
• Own end-to-end delivery for your technology stream, ensuring Core Technology systems ship predictably, reliably, and with high quality.
• Coordinate across engineering, design, art, and production to resolve dependencies and maintain forward momentum.
• Provide technical assessments for scope, risk, and feasibility throughout planning, milestones, and execution.
• Build strong partnerships with central technology teams, external partners, and other EA SPORTS franchises.
• Ensure Core Technology solutions scale across content pipelines, creative workflows, and runtime performance requirements.
• Lead and mentor domain tech leads and senior engineers, setting a high bar for technical excellence, ownership, and growth.
• Foster a culture of openness, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Define and champion engineering standards and best practices that scale across disciplines and across multiple annual releases.
• Champion performance-conscious design, ensuring Core Technology domains consistently meet CPU and GPU budgets across supported platforms.
• Guide teams in identifying and prioritizing performance risks, providing leadership and direction rather than hands-on profiling.

Required Experience & Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software or game development experience, including work on large codebases or shipped console titles.
• 3+ years of technical leadership or engineering management experience, leading multi-domain initiatives or managing senior technical leaders.
• Deep expertise in C++ and a strong understanding of modern game engine architecture, with the ability to evaluate solutions, assess risk, and guide decisions.
• A proven ability to drive technical strategy, align teams, and communicate complex ideas clearly across disciplines.
• Strong partnership skills, with experience working closely across engineering, design, art, production, and external technology groups.

Preferred Skills

• Leadership experience in gameplay, rendering, presentation, audio, or content creation workflows.
• Hands-on exposure to large-scale game engines.

Workplace

Hybrid model, 3 days a week out of the EAV Studio in Burnaby, British Columbia.

Benefits & Perks

• Vacation: 3 weeks per year to start.
• Sick time: 10 days per year.
• Paid top-up to EI/QPIP benefits up to 100% of base salary when welcoming a new child (12 weeks for maternity, 4 weeks for parental/adoption leave).
• Extended health, dental, and vision coverage.
• Life insurance and disability insurance.
• Retirement plan for regular full-time employees.
• Certain roles may also be eligible for bonus and other incentive programs.

About the Company

The team in Vancouver, British Columbia, is a diverse group of talented developers dedicated to solving unique technical challenges to create the most authentic on-ice experience for millions of players worldwide.