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Lead Technical Designer

ABOUT SPLASH DAMAGE

We believe that games play better with friends. For more than 20 years, we’ve been creating team-based multiplayer experiences that have entertained tens of millions of players all over the world and forged countless new friendships along the way.

Our studio culture is rooted in our open, friendly, and collaborative environment. Our games are made by people from all over the world, from our entry-level Fresh Talent hires to industry veterans, and we believe that fostering that diverse culture is the best way to build both our games and our studio. We have won numerous awards, including a ‘World-Class’ accreditation by Best Companies and being named one of the UK’s 100 Best Large Companies to work for.

While our offices are based in Bromley, UK, our people have access to progressive working patterns that give them the flexibility to decide how to do their best work.

Benefits:

We offer a comprehensive benefits package for you and your family, including:

• Work your way with access to progressive working patterns including hybrid and fully remote
• Substantial performance-related pay system on top of your basic compensation, along with enhanced pension contributions and our life assurance scheme
• Bespoke VISA and relocation packages for you and your family, with support from our team throughout the whole process
• 25 days of holiday and 8 Bank Holidays a year, plus our annual studio closure between Christmas and New Year’s
• Private Medical and Dental Cover for you and your family, along with a 24/7 digital GP service
• Extensive Mental Health support, with Line Manager Mental Health training, a group of Mental Health First-Aiders, and on-site or remote counselling
• Our bespoke Learning and Development course framework to help you grow as an employee, manager, and leader
• Industry-leading fully paid 30 weeks maternity leave & 10 weeks paternity leave

THE ROLE

As a Technical Designer, you are the Bridge between Design and Code.

We are hands-on members of the design team who focus on bringing designs to life: Building prototypes, identifying and solving the technical pitfalls, and ensuring crisp, clean cross-discipline communication.

You will liaise with other disciplines in the development of complex features representing Design’s interests, ensuring implementation meets the design brief.

As a designer, you will be a comprehensive feature owner, capable of concepting and communicating new designs on paper and in the game. You will prove new features by developing prototypes or providing accessible visualisations for the design team to experiment with. You will maintain familiarity with the technical and design aspects of the game’s development.

As a technician, you will act as a technical reference for designers in evaluating features. You’ll define and promote best practices in production workflows across the studio. You will carry out development tasks such as implementing scripted features on systems or levels. You may even assist the programming team in debugging, optimization or light programming work.

As a Lead, You are the Champion for your Discipline on the Project.

You will mentor, coach, manage and direct other Designers, including identifying Designers to work on features, levels or products within the studio. You will regularly be part of peer-reviews. You will define and set the standard for good tech design.

Alongside the Creative Director, you will help to establish and evangelise the game vision, defining quality targets and validating the quality targets of others.

You will consider the skills and talents of your team members and use their experience to identify risk, build roadmaps and become a force-multiplier for your team, mentoring them every step of the way. You will be heavily involved in hiring decisions on the project. You will interrogate the task estimates for your discipline and refine them to be increasingly accurate over time.

You will regularly communicate out progress against quality, scope and game vision alignment expectations. You will discuss and explain the rationale behind your decision making and listen, iterating on feedback from other disciplines or Designers. You will regularly present the areas of the game you are responsible for to the studio. Where necessary you will speak to the media and prepare key product messaging for the media.

Essential skills and expierence:

• Passion - for making and playing games.
• Industry experience in a Lead position - 2 shipped AAA console or PC titles that featured a multiplayer component, worked on from beginning to end; preferably a first or third-person shooter.
• People First – Experience running a multi-person design team. Motivated by getting the most out of your team, including conflict-management, mentoring and line-management.
• Feature Ownership Experience - for one or more key elements on a project, seeing the big picture impact of decisions, identifying the risks and blockers early, and proactively removing them.
• Scripting Experience - Hands on experience developing with scripting or programming languages (UE4, Unity, or similar), with an appreciation for writing clear, maintainable and scalable systems.
• Skilled Inter-Discipline Communicator – Highly skilled verbal and written communicator, able foster communication (and champion the needs) between technical and non-technical disciplines.
• Mastery of Documentation - Experience writing high quality and thorough design documentation and presentation; including wiki-based design documentation, flow charts, photoshop and spreadsheets.
• Mastery of Prototyping – Able to set the standard for the team on effective prototyping in a live-development environments, and effective iterative design.
• Mastery of Game Design - A deep understanding of areas including: feedback, controls, balance, narrative, level design, game-feel, usability, social mechanics and player motivation.
• Mastery of Systemic Design - A deep understanding of holistic systems, systemic design, emergent gameplay and the place of procedural content generation in development.
• Independent – Able to work independently without close supervision. A problem solver with lateral thinking.

Preferred skills and expierence:

• Experience with presentation – Using PowerPoint, video and photoshop to convey concepts to the team.
• Experience with Player Psychology - Knowledge of players motivations, team psychology and cognitive biases.
• Experience with Production - Experience constructing road maps to take a feature from concept to prototype to final implementation.
• Experience with Coding - Experience with C# or C++ or other compiled languages.
• Experience with Source Control - Experience with source-control applications (SVN, Perforce, AlienBrain, etc).
• Experience with Tool Development – Identifying the need for a tool, designing, then making it.
• Experience with Neighbouring Disciplines – Narrative Design, Level Design, Systems Design, Gameplay Programming.
• Undergraduate degree - In Video Game Design, Computer Science, Entertainment or a form of technical training.
• Passion for Shooters - Experience in creating first or third person shooters.

Splash Damage is an equal opportunity employer. We believe our teams create better work when they have a range of perspectives to draw from, and we are committed to creating an inclusive working environment that celebrates diversity.