Lead Encounter Designer

T-Minus Zero is a new, first-party, remote first studio formed by veteran game developers. Our mission is to build epic, immersive action games where players from around the world play together to form strong vibrant communities around our games. Our studio culture begins with implicit trust in everyone we hire. We are an open, friendly, mature, and highly collaborative environment that expertly balances quality of life with quality of work. We are looking for people who have a passion for making great player experiences. If you are looking for new opportunities check out all our open positions to see if there's a match for you.

T-Minus Zero is seeking a Lead Encounter Designer to join our team. Your initial impact on the project will be as a key contributor on the prototype for our brand-new AAA game & IP. As we move further into development, you will build our encounter design team and lead them. You will work closely with the Design Director, Gameplay team, Art, and Engineering teams to help define the pillars for our encounters and boss fights, along with the pipeline for how we create them. In the early stages of development you will author enemy abilities and behavior and collaborate with Level design to compose encounters in our world.

To be successful in this role, you will need to be both a guide as well as collaborator for fellow teammates across all disciplines. You will need to know what great looks like in terms of encounter feel and challenge, and be able to communicate that to your team. You should be comfortable communicating design goals, requirements, and feedback to other teammates to ensure success.

In addition, you will need to be able to assist in identifying top applicants, hire them, and get them onboarded to the team. This is a special opportunity with a very talented team. We look forward to seeing your application!

Key Responsibilities

• Hire and manage a team of talented encounter designers!
• Assign tasks, priorities, and provide feedback to your team on their work to ensure success.
• Provide performance reviews and career guidance for your team.
• Define the vision and be accountable for the game’s combat encounters that you and your team create.
• Generate comprehensive documentation and supplementary materials to articulate encounter design concepts, best practices, and requirements.
• Utilize Unreal Engine to design and implement engaging combat scenarios and boss fights.
• Responsible for the design, balance, and maintenance of critical game encounters, including enemy behavior and abilities, environmental interactions, and challenge scaling
• Collaborate with a multidisciplinary team including engineers, animators, artists, and sound designers to deliver a high-caliber player experience with robust feedback mechanisms.
• Lead the iterative development process by managing playtesting sessions, gathering player feedback, and developing actionable solutions to enhance encounter designs.

Basic Qualifications

• Minimum of 8 years in professional game design, with a specific focus on encounter or raid design in AAA titles.
• 3+ years of professional experience in multiplayer game development.
• Proven track record of designing and shipping complex encounters in first- or third-person action or shooter games.
• Prior experience as a lead encounter designer or similar leadership role where you managed and mentored at least 2 other designers.
• Excellent time management skills.
• Strong communication and leadership skills.
• Proficiency in Unreal Engine, with a strong grasp of its tools and systems for encounter design.
• Skilled in scripting with Blueprint or other comparable visual/text-based programming languages.

Preferred Qualifications

• Expert knowledge of creature and ability creation pipelines and best practices.
• Proven track record of success leading multi-disciplinary feature teams.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to make data-informed design decisions
• A deep passion for gaming with an extensive understanding of various game genres, especially in terms of encounter and level design.

We are an equal opportunity employer that embraces diversity, equity and inclusion. All employment decisions are made without regard to race, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, genetic information, religion, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, marital status, family status, veteran status, or any other protected status as required as by law.