Lead Game Designer

Remote
Full Time
Experienced

We are hiring a Lead Game Designer for a remote position who will own the design vision and quality bar across our games while building and mentoring a multidisciplinary game design team that consistently delivers high-quality, data-informed experiences. This is a product-focused leadership role responsible for improving retention, engagement, progression, and monetization by defining a clear design direction, maintaining a high standard of design quality, and driving a disciplined A/B testing and design R&D practice.
The role is fully remote and requires at least 4–5 hours of daily overlap with Pakistan Standard Time (GMT+5).

This role is ideal for someone who:
● sets a clear design vision and holds a high quality bar without becoming a bottleneck
● is hands-on with systems design and design documentation, not only management
● builds and mentors designers toward domain specialization
● uses data and experimentation to prioritize and validate design decisions

CORE RESPONSIBILITIES
1) Design Vision & Direction
● Own the design vision for all products, setting the design foundation and guiding designers at a high level.
● Align with Studio Head and Game Leads on where each game's design is headed.
● Co-own the design direction of each product with Game Leads; escalate major design pivots to the Studio Head.
● Turn ambiguity into clear design direction and build-ready decisions.
2) Design Quality Bar (Hands-on)
● Set and maintain standards for all design documentation, sheets, A/B tests, and playtesting protocols.
● Review specs, economy and progression sheets, and feature docs for completeness, clarity, and
applied data analytics.
● Lead the design of major systems where needed: core loop, progression, economy, monetization, and LiveOps.
● Establish and maintain a clear design quality bar across the studio.
3) Design Team Development & Specialization
● Hire, onboard, and mentor game designers to be multidisciplinary and eventually specialize across
three domains:
○ Gameplay, Retention & Engagement
○ Economy, Progression & Data
○ Monetization & LiveOps
● Run weekly 1:1s with all direct reports.
● Build successor capability: at least one designer ready to lead design on a product.
● Reduce the number of design decisions that escalate to Game Leads and the Studio Head.
4) A/B Testing Ownership
● Own the studio-wide A/B testing pipeline and set best practices for hypotheses, test documentation,
analysis, and decision-making.
● Co-own A/B test and feature-shipping prioritization with Game Leads.
● Convert test insights into backlog priorities and measurable design actions.
5) Design R&D & Analytics
● Lead R&D in game design tools and best practices, data analysis pipelines and dashboards, and
predictive modelling.
● Stay current on every product's analytics and dashboards.
● Learn and apply data analytics and predictive modelling to at least one product.
6) Playtesting & Design Fluency
● Involve the whole studio in frequent playtesting sessions (our products and beyond).
● Maintain a personal playtime practice of roughly 3 hours per product weekly, and feed notes into
designer 1:1s.
● Attend design reviews as a participant and quality challenger, not the sole decision-maker.
7) Stakeholder Communication & Clarity
● Keep leadership updated with clear status, risks, and next steps.
● Write concise decision notes that reduce confusion and rework.
● Ensure the team has clarity on what success looks like for each design initiative.

KEY DELIVERABLES (EXPECTED OUTPUTS)
● A clear, documented design vision and direction for each product.
● A maintained design quality bar: standards and templates for specs, sheets, A/B tests, and playtesting.
● A multidisciplinary design team with visible progress on each designer's specialization track.
● A running studio-wide A/B testing pipeline with quality hypotheses, documentation, and analysis.
● Design R&D output applied to live products (tools, dashboards, predictive models).
● Regular design reviews with clear decisions, action items, and ownership.

DECISION RIGHTS & INTERFACES
● Design hires, exits, and specialization paths.
● Studio-wide design quality standards and review metrics.
● A/B testing methodology and pipeline.
● Design tooling and R&D investment.
You co-own (with Game Leads)
● Design direction of each product.
● A/B test and feature-shipping prioritization.
● Major design scope decisions affecting team capacity.
You co-own (with the Studio Head)
● Studio-level design strategy and big design decisions.
● Budget for design tools, R&D, and design-team headcount.
You influence / support
● Retention, monetization, and player-experience improvements via design changes, experiments, and
insight-driven recommendations.
Individual designers retain authority on
● Specific feature design decisions within the agreed direction.
● Day-to-day design execution and documentation on their assigned product.
Escalate to the Studio Head
● Anything affecting studio-level commitments (GP, ROI, capacity).
● Major design pivots on a product.
● Cross-studio or group-level design topics.

REQUIREMENTS (MUST HAVE)
● 5-10+ years in mobile F2P game design, with meaningful time spent leading or mentoring designers.
● Shipped multiple live products or major updates, not just prototypes.
● Strong systems design fundamentals: gameplay, retention, progression, economy, monetization,
LiveOps.
● Strong design documentation: specs, economy and progression sheets, and tuning plans that
engineers and artists can build without guessing.
● A/B testing ownership: hypotheses, test design, analysis, and decision-making.
● Comfortable with product analytics and dashboards (e.g., ByteBrew, Adjust) to drive design decisions.
● Comfortable leading remotely and influencing without authority.
● Very strong English (written and spoken).

NICE-TO-HAVES
● Hybrid simulation / management (sim/tycoon) game expertise.
● Experience building a multidisciplinary design team and specialization tracks from scratch.
● Familiarity with predictive modelling and building design analytics pipelines and dashboards.
● Familiarity with Unity pipelines and constraints (no coding required).
● Experience working with teams across multiple time zones.

TOOLS WE USE
● Coda (documentation hub)
● Miro (flows, maps, UX collaboration)
● Asana (tasks + planning)
● Slack (daily communication)
● ByteBrew / Adjust (analytics & dashboards)

WORKING MODEL
● Remote 
● High-ownership role. We care about outcomes, not meetings.
● Must be available for key overlap hours with GMT+5 for reviews and alignment
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