Senior Director, Game Design & Bid Management

Sperasoft is a leading international game development company contributing to franchises such as Halo, Battlefield, Assassin’s Creed, and Rainbow 6. It is headquartered in Burbank, CA, and is part of Keywords Studios, a global technical and creative services provider to the video games industry. Sperasoft partners with major clients including Ubisoft, Microsoft, Warner Brothers, 343 Industries, Riot Games, Electronic Arts, Sony, BioWare, and Blizzard Entertainment.

Required:

• 10+ years of experience in game development, including significant game design leadership.
• 5+ years leading large multidisciplinary teams or departments.
• Experience in AAA, co-development, external development, or live-service environments.
• Proven success managing client relationships and supporting business development.
• Experience leading estimation, proposal development, or bid management.
• Strong understanding of game design disciplines, production methodologies, and development pipelines.
• Ability to lead organizational growth, strategic planning, and change management.
• Exceptional communication, presentation, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred:

• Experience with multiple international publishers and development partners.
• Experience leading large-scale RFP responses and proposal development.
• Experience managing globally distributed teams.
• Experience building scalable organizations across projects and genres.
• Experience developing estimation frameworks and bid management processes.
• Commitment to continuous improvement in design craft, communication, leadership, and industry expertise.

Department Leadership

• Define and execute the long-term vision, strategy, and goals of the Design Department.
• Align departmental priorities with company objectives, market trends, client needs, and future business opportunities.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives to increase department effectiveness, scalability, quality, and operational excellence.
• Establish and monitor departmental KPIs and organizational health metrics.
• Develop and maintain an organizational structure of Directors, Leads, Subject Matter Experts, and contributors.
• Ensure expertise coverage across all design disciplines.
• Evaluate and improve organizational effectiveness.
• Lead succession planning and leadership development.
• Manage Design Directors, Associate Directors, and senior design leaders.
• Define career development frameworks and performance expectations.
• Provide coaching, mentorship, and leadership support.
• Partner with Talent Management on hiring, workforce planning, retention, and succession.
• Address engagement, performance, retention, and organizational risks.
• Foster a culture of creativity, collaboration, accountability, and continuous learning.
• Host department meetings to communicate strategy and updates.
• Promote knowledge sharing through workshops and mentoring.
• Create an inclusive environment supporting innovation and growth.

Design Excellence & Project Oversight

• Provide executive oversight for game design development across projects.
• Establish review mechanisms, quality benchmarks, and governance practices.
• Support Design Directors and Leads in resolving complex design challenges.
• Maintain accountability for workforce planning and staffing recommendations.
• Balance utilization, capability development, succession planning, and project needs.
• Review and approve strategic staffing for major engagements.

Bid Management & New Business Leadership

• Own the end-to-end bid development process for new business opportunities.
• Ensure proposal quality, consistency, and submission readiness.
• Partner with Business Development, Account Management, and Executive Leadership on bid decisions.
• Ensure proposals align with client requirements, business objectives, capabilities, and profitability.
• Lead development of project solutions, delivery approaches, staffing models, timelines, and engagement strategies.
• Collaborate with Design, Art, Engineering, Production, QA, and PMO leadership on proposals.
• Ensure proposals reflect project scope, risks, dependencies, and resource needs.
• Balance competitiveness, quality, feasibility, and commercial performance.
• Lead estimation activities and establish methodologies, standards, and governance.
• Review and validate assumptions on staffing, schedules, budgets, scope, and delivery.
• Improve estimation quality and forecasting accuracy.
• Participate in client discovery sessions and lead or support proposal presentations.
• Present design approaches, delivery strategies, staffing models, and methodologies to clients.
• Build client confidence through expertise and communication.
• Support and coach department leaders in client-facing activities.
• Serve as escalation point of contact post project kick-off.
• Establish and maintain bid management processes, proposal standards, and best practices.
• Coordinate contributions from all departments for proposals.
• Ensure timely delivery and quality of proposals.
• Analyze proposal outcomes and implement improvements.

Standards, Processes & Capability Development

• Establish, maintain, and evolve department standards, methodologies, and best practices.
• Drive consistency in design reviews, documentation, estimation, proposal development, and delivery planning.
• Audit workflows and processes to improve effectiveness and scalability.
• Adapt design and development frameworks to project and client needs.
• Define and execute learning and development strategy.
• Identify current and future skill requirements.
• Establish training programs, mentorship, and professional development.
• Promote continuous improvement in design craft, communication, leadership, and industry expertise.