Lead Game Designer

In this role, you can expect to:

• Key Accountabilities


• Hold and communicate a growth-oriented design vision:
• You collaborate with business owners, discipline stakeholders, and the design team to craft a growth-oriented, future-looking design vision for the game. You are responsible for ensuring that the vision is clear and communicated upwards and downwards. You uphold that vision and are responsible for ensuring design adheres to that vision. You adjust the vision as business realities change and clearly communicate adjustments.


• Product Roadmap:
• You represent design in product roadmapping. You use intent-driven design to bridge the gap between player and product to drive the roadmap forward. You advocate for the needs and priorities of the design team and ensure they have proper support. You collaborate with stakeholders for accuracy and to create buy-in.


• Design Management:
• You are accountable for ensuring that the design team is properly managed. You work with design managers to foster an environment of growth, mentorship, and coaching. You build and help lead a culture of accountability, supportiveness, and cohesiveness. You ensure your designers feel they are part of a safe environment that allows them to take risks, learn and grow. You ensure succession plans are established and critical vulnerabilities are triaged.


• Design Leadership Coaching:
• You directly support and coach the design leads, acting as a sounding board and actively cultivating leadership and managerial qualities. You ensure your design leads know the business and product goals and understand how their work impacts those goals. You establish, train, and mentor your direct successor (or successors).


• Maximize design team efficiency:
• You are responsible for ensuring the design team’s time is being spent efficiently to maximize output, create growth opportunities, and ensure sustainability. You collaborate with team leaders to understand priorities and build team literacy in what work is impactful and what work isn’t. You ensure the team is using efficient tools and processes and you advocate for them when external support is needed. 


• Set and uphold design standards:
• You set, uphold and champion design standards. You ensure the design team and their initiatives use intention-based design to craft game features and content that meet the needs and expectations of the product and the players. You balance quality and expediency to create a design culture that is both detail-oriented and flexible.

To be successful in this role, your background includes:

• BSc / BA or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years in game development, with 4+ of those being in mobile free-to-play.
• 3+ years of leadership or management experience.
• Strong skills in Communication, Collaboration, and Leadership.
• Has strong understanding of technologies associated with game development and production (capabilities and limitations).
• Remains current on competitor products, industry trends and techniques in game design.
• AAA large-scale development experience a plus.

Our success is due to the hard work of our people. We share our success with our people through flexible benefits and reward programs, sweet swag, snacks, and more. Here’s a look at some of the support we provide our people:

• Extended Health Coverage: effective day one, no waiting period! Our benefits cover health, dental, life, disability, and extended paramedical services such as vision care, mental health practitioners, massage, physiotherapy, acupuncture, and much more.
• DEIB Benefits: DEIB is important to us and to our people - that’s why our benefits include gender-affirming care, fertility care, and other hormonal treatments and drugs.
• Flexible Spending Accounts: our benefits are built on a flex credit model, so you’re able to choose the coverage levels that are right for you, and allocate the rest to a group RRSP/TFSA, Health Spending account, and/or Personal Spending Account.
• RRSP Matching: everyone retires eventually, and we help our people save for their futures with a contribution matching program once you reach 90 days with us.
• PTO and Parental Leave: we offer paid parental leave, flexible paid time off, paid time off for volunteering, sick leave, and holiday closures.
• Employee and Family Assistance Program: this program provides crisis management support, immediate mental health care, and generalized support for emotional, mental, and financial well-being.
• Telus Virtual Health: we provide increased access to remote healthcare providers for prescription refills or referrals from the comfort of your home.
• Learning and growth: We encourage people to grow both personally and professionally, and support this through regular lunch & learns and an education stipend.
• Pay transparency: We share with employees the pay range their role falls within and clear career maps to determine how they can grow within their role or level-up to a promotion. 
• Cool spaces: Our offices are in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Montreal, Prince Edward Island, and Seoul. Whether it’s summers on the rooftop patio in Downtown Vancouver, watching the fireworks in Montreal’s South Shore, or trying local eats in Downtown Charlottetown - we want our people to feel like their time spent in office is worthwhile!
• Giving back: Kabammers have a dedicated paid day off every year to volunteer to a cause close to their hearts. Some teams even band together for group volunteer days off-site!