Live Ops Game Design Manager, Pokémon GO

The Pokémon GO team is seeking a Live Ops Design Manager to help the team build compelling gameplay experiences that delight and engage our players. As a key member of the design team, your primary role will be managing design personnel and supporting designer initiatives. You are committed to advocating for design needs, defining process flows, and maintaining quality of life improvements for live operation designers. You love collaborating with peers and cross functional teams to guide reviews and development, ensuring projects are up to standard at each delivery milestone. You are driven to ensure the quality of design implementation and in tune with the overall gameplay experience. You are dedicated to expanding Pokémon Go’s unique brand identity to ensure Trainers continue to have fun and explore the real world!

Responsibilities

• Manage a team of internal game designers.
• Operationalize external game design contractors globally.
• Resource management of staff to provide adequate design coverage.
• Work with leads and managers to identify and implement workflow improvements.
• Ensure all game design represents our product, resonates with our audience, and unifies the brand experience.
• Craft, maintain, and optimize concise documentation/templates.
• Develop new processes across the team and ensure they are shared and understood by game design and cross-functional teams.
• Provide leadership and be the strongest advocate for the live ops game design team.
• Mentor, develop and support team members, in terms of their work and career progression.
• Set strategy, priorities and resource allocation decisions that help achieve product goals while maintaining content as well as brand integrity.
• Create and develop team schedules and ensure proper workflow throughout the game design department.
• Anticipate and recognize potential production issues and recommend appropriate solutions.
• Cultivate Niantic’s culture and principles within the group, while setting new standards in executional and operational excellence.
• Collaborate with cross-functional team members and stakeholders, including regular and reliable attendance and participation in meetings.
• Required in-office 2 days on Wednesday and Thursday.

Qualifications

• 3+ years experience managing teams plus 5+ years as a senior or lead game designer.
• Demonstrated ability to handle and develop the well being of a growing team of game designers in a dynamically changing production environment.
• Project management experience in mobile game development or live services.
• Experience working on feature development from end to end.
• Strong understanding of game development, design systems and game balance.
• Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.
• Expertise with project tracking software.
• Experience running experiments, editing game master templates and related admin tools.
• Demonstrated success in creating a collaborative culture of Design, Product and Engineering.
• Empathetic and strong advocate for game design.
• Deep brand and design knowledge for Pokémon GO and the general Pokémon franchise (Level 40 and up preferred).
• Ability to work in a fast-paced hybrid environment and handle stress appropriately and/or ability to solve practical problems and be sufficiently adaptable to handle dynamic situations with little advance notice.
• Experience working on cross-functional teams with ability to communicate effectively through written and verbal communications, including synchronous interactions with others.

Plus If…

• Bilingual in both English and Japanese.
• Knowledge in JIRA and Unity.
• Leadership training certifications.
• Experience with AR games or features.
• Experience building tools.

The total compensation package for this position includes a new hire offer base salary range of $135,000 - $158,000 + bonus + equity + benefits.

Individual pay within this salary range is determined by work location and additional factors, including assessed job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. Your recruiter can answer any questions about new hire total compensation during the hiring process. An overview of benefit offerings for your location can be found on the careers page.

Join the Niantic team!

Niantic's global-scale augmented reality platform and digital map powers spatial computing experiences in the real world. Incubated out of the Maps team at Google, Niantic first created Ingress and then Pokémon GO, a cultural phenomenon and hit game played by tens of millions of people each month. Niantic’s Lightship platform, which powers Pokémon GO, also supports the company's other games including Pikmin Bloom, Peridot and Monster Hunter Now. Developers use Niantic’s platform to build their own AR applications and experiences, either with the Lightship Platform or directly through the web with 8th Wall.

We believe that cultivating a workplace where our people are supported and included is essential to creating great products our community will love. Our mission emphasizes seeking and hiring diverse voices, including those who are traditionally underrepresented in the technology industry, and we consider this to be one of the most important values we hold close.

Niantic is a hybrid first company. We believe that in person interaction and collaboration fosters creativity, a sense of community, and is critical to our future success as a company. Our hybrid work schedules allow for a mix of remote and in-office work.

We're a hard-working, fun, and exciting group who value intellectual curiosity and a passion for problem-solving! We have growing offices located in San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, Bellevue, Kansas, London, Tokyo, Hamburg, Hyderabad, and Zurich. #LI-HYBRID