Digital Director - Play Invention Lead

Job Description

Do you want to make the world much more playful?

Do you go through life with a childlike playful curiosity, asking how things work and what fills people with joy? Do you get excited when people say it can’t be done?
 

Grab your inventors backpack and lead some of the most exciting exploration work in strange and playful lands and join the LEGO Group’s Play Discovery Team.
 

Where days are filled with playing with real-time immersive technologies, tinkering with toys, the IoT and taking sensory mixed reality, AR/VR and audio to new dimensions. Hacking electronics, challenging and seeking out ways to find the magic and refining the very definition of enjoyment.

If you are an incredibly creative technical wizard who can make technology do anything they want to invent great play, then LEGO Creative Play Lab would like to meet you.

Core Responsibilities
Driven by curiosity and playfulness we want the Play Invention Lead to;

• Embrace discovery and wonder by inventing powerful physical-digital play

• Build a visionary roadmap for digital play focusing on generating amazing opportunities to surprise and delight children across the world to play their way.

• Unlock the potential of a world class team, create a playground for them to succeed, feedback, learn and inspire others in a collaborative and experimental culture.

• Empower the Inventors to bravely explore new pathways, who start with kid’s needs, working with and representing them throughout development, a team who take high risk to find a new dimension of play.

• Pioneer play and be ready for any eventuality by developing world class tools, hacking sheds, magic time-machines; techniques for innovating, rapid prototyping and developing the future of digital play experiences across platforms.

• Collaborate closely with the LEGO Business to support strategic goals and inspire and challenge to exceed targets through inventions which unlock massive play value

• Keep the LEGO System-in-Play fresh and ever evolving to maintain The LEGO Group as the thought leaders in the toy industry.

• Scout for, then lead, exceptional freelancers, external expert partners, companies and academics, which can flex quickly and easily.

• Extend your superpowers by creating a network of specialist collaborators who can add a magical twist when its needed. Help them grow successful prototype development and inspire them to use our components and tools to their maximum potential through sharing common values.

Play your part in our team succeeding
Play Discovery is a capability built on how kids play and discovery is central to our purpose:

“To make the world a playground and create a life more playful, our job must be playground.”

We are a world class diverse team of Play Experts that play together with everyone and help elevate the Play Experiences across the world, Pioneers ready for any eventuality, inventing the future of prototyping, immersive storytelling, visual sensorial communication methods, collaboration and building that extra powerful (extra/tenth) sense of exploration.

This role will seek new ways to play, enabled by software and curious on never done before thinking or re-applying existing software in unexpected ways.

“It’s a privilege to come to work each day to inspire, experiment, innovate and find new and exciting ways to make the lives of children and families more joyful; that everything we do makes the life more playful, can’t wait to see what happens next"

Do you have what it takes?
Potential is more important than qualifications in a role like this. Most of our inventors have outstanding but unexpected careers, self-directing their own path from one interesting project to the next opportunity:

• A creative technical wizard: An amazing portfolio that breaks the boundaries of innovation in a chain of pioneering professional adventures.

• Driven by the unknown; An Experienced leader of technology teams for at least 5 years that have created the never been done before.

• Multidimensional thinking: Experience to know when to empower and when to motivate by pushing for higher standards.

• Software Guru; An excellent track record as a Creative Software Director with a playful nature and sharp observation skills, bringing at least 3 innovative Products and/or Services to market.

• A lateral problem solver: Able to show where you saw the potential that others missed and challenge in inspiring and different ways.

• A curious beacon: Experimental mentality consistently seeking evidence to check your opinions and beliefs with real consumers. Knowing how to design experiments to avoid your own and the team’s biases, lead by example and create room to learn and learn again.

• A translator: The ability to explain advanced technical concepts in relatable ways that get design, business and project management united to the same direction.

• Comfortable with business decisions; able to look behind any request to get the real needs and drivers, then make trade-offs based on return on investment.

• A powerful network. Rather than attempting to solve every challenge internally, you turn to the right external partners at the right time to move more efficiently that helps us set the standard and think differently.

• A deep knowledge across a broad range of play related software technologies and experience with agile methodology within prototyping, experimentation and rapid iteration.

• C#, C++, Python, JAVA or Swift/Objective-C development skills.

• Primary development platform experience with Unity and/or Unreal.

Nice to Have:

• A grounding in Child Psychology and play would be an advantage and experience in consumer research and/or facilitating consumer observations, tests and co-collaborations.

• Experience with Convolutional Neural Networks and/or other Artificial Intelligence platforms an advantage. This could be hands on experience with TensorFlow, Caffee, Pytorch and similar technologies.

• Experience with computer vision, IoT and augmented/mixed reality also an advantage.

• English Level 13+

Join the global LEGO® family

Children are our role models. Their curiosity, creativity and imagination inspire everything we do. We strive to create a diverse, dynamic and inclusive culture of play at the LEGO Group, where everyone feels safe, valued, and they belong.

The LEGO Group is proud to be an equal opportunity and an affirmative action employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, colour, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or Veteran status.

We support our employees in being there for the moments that matter in life and celebrate families of all kinds, the loved ones that make us who we are. Being part of the LEGO Group also means taking part in our annual Play Day, playing a part in building a sustainable future and continuing our mission to “inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow.”

The LEGO Group is fully committed to Children’s Rights and Child Wellbeing across the globe. Candidates offered positions with high engagement with children are required to take part in Child Safeguarding Background Screening, as a condition of the offer.

Thank you for sharing our global commitment to Children’s Rights.

Build your career brick by brick at the LEGO Group.

Core Responsibilities

• Define the play innovation (digital) roadmap, focusing on generating substantial and sustainable new business opportunities from technology enabled play and unlock massive play value.

• Encourage, coach and mentor your team – set them up for success then hold them to the highest quality standard.

• Build a roadmap for career growth for the team to feel empowered and show their true potential.

• Collaborate closely with the LEGO Business to support strategic goals and inspire and challenge to exceed targets through inventions which unlock massive play value

• Work closely with the strategy, research, Engineering, GTM, LEGO Designers and Operations to ensure that play innovation can be developed and manufactured in a feasible and environmentally responsible way

• Keep the LEGO System-in-Play fresh and ever evolving to maintain The LEGO Group as leaders with vision in the toy industry.

• Extended teams - Scout for, then lead, exceptional freelancers, external expert partners, companies and academics, which can flex quickly and easily.

• A network of specialist collaborators who can add a magical twist when its needed. Help them grow successful prototype development and guide them to use our components and tools to their maximum potential through sharing common values

What’s in it for you?

Here are some of what to expect:

• Family Care Leave – We offer enhanced paid leave options for those important times.

• Insurances – All colleagues are covered by our life and disability insurance which provides protection and peace of mind.

• Wellness – We want you to be your best self, so you’ll have access to the Headspace App and lots of wellbeing initiatives and programmes run by local teams where you are based.

• Colleague Discount – We know you'll love to build so from day 1 you will qualify for our generous colleague discount.

• Bonus – We do our best work to succeed together. When goals are reached, you’ll be rewarded through our global bonus scheme.

• Your workplace – Our offices will be your primary workplace with flexibility to work from home during your working week. Your People Leader will discuss the principles of our hybrid work model, role eligibility and frequency with you.

Children are our role models. Their curiosity, creativity and imagination inspire everything we do. We strive to create a diverse, dynamic and inclusive culture of play at the LEGO Group, where everyone feels safe, valued and they belong.

The LEGO Group is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to equal employment opportunity and equal pay regardless of e.g. race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, disability or gender identity.

The LEGO Group is fully committed to Children’s Rights and Child Wellbeing across the globe. Candidates offered positions with high engagement with children are required to take part in Child Safeguarding Background Screening, as a condition of the offer. 

Thank you for sharing our global commitment to Children’s Rights.

Just imagine building your dream career.

Then make it real.

Join the LEGO® team today.