Lead Game Designer

About the role:

As a pivotal leader within our design team, you will be instrumental in shaping major systems and features for new game concepts. In this role, you will direct and mentor a team of senior designers, with skip-level management responsibilities for additional mid to junior designers. Your leadership will extend beyond mere oversight; you'll be a driving force in their professional development through feedback, coaching, and promoting a culture of continuous improvement. Your contributions will not only influence your direct reports but also enrich our broader product strategy and portfolio of games as you share insights and learnings across the organization

What you'll achieve:

• You will lead the design of core systems in our new games that are vital to their success by:
• Leveling up the design team through clear direction, consistent feedback, and engaged coaching.
• Crafting proposals that articulate how these features and systems align with the game’s design pillars and encourage the desired player behaviors.
• Delivering clear, concise, and thorough specifications to cross-functional teams responsible for implementing these systems.
• Providing team members with direction on how content should be created, tuned, and live operated within these systems.
• You will become an expert in the genre, target audience, and the game’s mechanics and systems, and share your learnings with the broader product organization to advance our collective knowledge.

What you'll need to be successful:

• A comprehensive view of game systems and the implications of design decisions across both the product and player lifecycle.
• A firm understanding of fundamental design principles, metagame systems, game economies, and player psychology that enables you to design from first principles.
• Ability to articulate the nuances of abstract concepts and how they apply to complex, interrelated systems.
• Ability to synthesize feedback from team members, user play tests, and other validation efforts into actionable product insights and rapidly iterate on designs.
• Proven experience in games as a service and live operations – demonstrating a clear vision of excellence and the ability to establish effective design processes, workflows, and tooling.
• Strong leadership and management skills, adept at developing design teams through mentorship and remote management.
• Demonstrated commitment to team and organizational aspects of design leadership, dedicating 50% of time to these responsibilities.
• Natural curiosity and eagerness to learn are valued traits. Leaders are expected to stay abreast of industry trends and apply insights to current and future projects