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Level Design Craft Director

Do you live, breathe, and dream F2P puzzle levels? Is your mind filled with crazy ideas on ways to evolve the player's experience? Do you know how to inspire and lead a team to create their best work? We are looking for an experienced and passionate Level Design Craft Director to join our successful Puzzle Studio.

Our vision is to innovate on the puzzle category with games that fill players with delight. You will come in with experience and leadership to drive our Level Design Craft with vision and direction. Levels are a key focus area for our studio and you will take them to the next level. As a critical part of the Design Department, you will analyze the current strengths and weaknesses of our Levels and drive key initiatives to improve the success of our craft and our games. We expect that you share our passion to take puzzle gaming to the next level by providing deeper gameplay experiences, and for that, you want to understand how levels connect to all other areas of the game, level mechanics, player feedback, level design philosophies, and the player journey in all ways.

Responsibilities:

• Work closely with the Design Director and other Craft Directors/Leads to ensure we are reaching the Studio and Department needs and goals.
• Lead the Vision and Mission for the craft to ensure all Level designers are driven to lead the industry in excellence and craftsmanship.
• Be the champion for Level Design across the studio and teams.
• Create and put in place level design philosophies to design core game logic and level mechanics.
• Understand and craft the players' journey through the level experience.
• Work with other stakeholders on games to ensure the craft is reaching our goals and needs for excellence.
• Advise LiveOps team on A/B tests best practices related to level content and core/toy to drive results.
• Collaborate with other designers to craft cohesive experiences for players.
• Mentor/coach designers working on features related to the level experience and level creation.
• Occasionally getting in the trenches to build levels of high quality and lead by example.

Who we think will do great in this role has:

• About 10 years of commercial experience and proven success working on mobile F2P games, with 8 years of experience building levels for a match game. Experience in both operating live games and developing new games from scratch is a plus.
• Shipped 3+ games as Lead Level Designer or Lead Designer for a released game. Some time as Level Design Director a plus.
• The need to push limits and try new things, the curiosity and willingness to explore, and the ability to discover new experiences for players.
• The ability to get in the trenches to assist teams and lead by example.
• Experience working closely with BI to understand the data and create a plan to improve KPIs.
• Experience in people leadership - building, managing, and developing a team and its members.
• An ability to align a team behind a vision and coach the team to high performance.
• Strong spoken and written communication skills.
• Strong critical thinking, infectious creativity, the ability to adapt when required, and the capacity to solve novel problems.

Recruitment process:

• First meeting: You will meet the hiring manager. The aim is for us to know who you are, what your experience has been, and what motivates you. This is also an opportunity for you to learn about Rovio, the wider team, and the specifics of the role.
• Second round: You will do an exercise to complete in your own time so that we can better understand your analysis skills and design process.
• Third round: You will meet with Lead Designers to dive deeper into the exercise.
• Final round: You will be invited to meet the Head of Studio and Level Design Craft Leads. Our aim is to get a clear overview of your skills, how you would fit with our working culture, your ambitions and where you can help us develop as well as we help you.

#LI-Hybrid

Rovio’s Puzzle Studio has their sights set on becoming the most successful casual puzzle game studio in the world. Exploring new and emerging trends in puzzle games, the studio has built a deep understanding of the puzzle genre and its players since its founding in 2014. The studio has introduced innovations in puzzle game core with the free-flowing Angry Birds Dream Blast, several match 3 games such as Angry Birds Match and Small Town Murders as well as slingshot games like Angry Birds Friends and a great newcomer Angry Birds Journey. With their games, Puzzle Studio aims to create a true emotional connection that stays with players even when they’re not playing.

We welcome applicants to use the name they want to be addressed by in the application form, regardless of whether it is their legal name.