Principal 3Cs Designer

With a rich history of developing multiple AAA franchises such as Little Big Planet and Crackdown, as well as contributing to genre-defining titles like the Forza Motorsport and Hitman series, Sumo Sheffield’s vast development experience spans multiple genres and platforms.

As winners of the TIGA Star Employment Award for 2021, recipients of the GI Biz 2020 Best Places to Work Award and listed as one of the UK’s 100 Best Large Companies to Work for in 2021 and 2022, Sumo Digital has enjoyed 20 years of stability and growth since its formation in 2003 and continues to strive for excellence across every single project.

The team have a track record of working on some of the world's biggest and best games and received two BAFTAs for their work on Sackboy: A Big Adventure. As the scale and exclusivity of projects continues to grow, there’s never been a more exciting time to join the Sumo Sheffield family!

We are looking for a Principal 3Cs Designer to join our team at Sumo Sheffield! This is a fantastic opportunity to make an impact and play a pivotal role in developing a groundbreaking and ambitious new AAA open-world action RPG with a unique focus on traversal.

As a Principal 3Cs Designer, you will be responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining our character, camera and controls systems across the game. You will work with creative leadership and the design team to realise a vision for 3Cs that supports the core game experience. In addition to being a master of your craft, you will be responsible for establishing, demonstrating, and evangelising guidelines and best practices for 3Cs and game design that ensure the vision is delivered at a consistently high-quality level across the Game Design team.

Within this role you will:

• Interpret the creative vision of the game to design 3Cs systems and mechanics.
• Collaborate with gameplay and live-ops design team members, to create cohesive and scalable systems that support player progression and mastery.
• Strive for quality and innovation while adhering to the core vision of the game.
• End to end feature ownership; from inception through to game release.
• Form goals and success metrics for each feature you own and implement.
• Create high level presentation materials for pitching concepts to product stakeholders.
• Produce low level specifications for feature costing and production schematics.
• Design, model, review and tune complex game systems based on high-level concepts.
• Review and adjust designs and systems in response to user testing and telemetry data.
• Co-implement designs using industry-standard and in-house tools.
• Mentor junior design team members.

We need you to have:

• Shipped one or more AAA titles using UE4+ or equivalent engine.
• A proven track record of 3Cs design in AAA games, from product inception through to release.
• Proven ability designing, configuring, and fine-tuning scalable player character abilities.
• The ability to evangelise features you own to multi-discipline teams and across the organisation.
• An understanding of a product’s user base and player behaviours.
• Experience in designing and balancing complex systems for AAA games.
• Ability to collaborate with Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Organisational and workload management skills are essential for success.
• The ability to empathise with different disciplines to form aligned and sympathetic concepts.
• A background in game theory and the science behind design.
• Knowledge of UE4+ Blueprint or equivalent scripting is desirable but not required.

. Defined Annual Bonus Scheme

. ULEV car scheme

. Monthly allowance to spend on enhancing benefits

. Salary Sacrifice Pension

. Flexible Working

. 21 days free-use holiday

+ your birthday off

+ 5 learning days including 1 volunteer day

+ a duvet day

+ Christmas shutdown from Christmas Eve to New Year

+ Bank Holidays

+ extra allowance accrued for longer service

. Free dental insurance

. Life Assurance 4x Salary

. Income Protection of 75% for 5 years

. Enhanced Mat/Paternity & Adoption pay

. Employee Assistance Programme:

. Help at Hand - Remote GP, Mental Health & Physio appointments

. Free financial & home buying support consultations

. Cycle to Work Scheme

. Payroll Giving Scheme

. Access to 4,000 Udemy Courses

. Career Development Pathway

. Wrap Parties.

. Project Completion Awards

. Game/Creative Jams

. Big Family Events

. Studio social activities, e.g. running, board games, film, yoga, life drawing…

. Prism – Sumo’s employee diversity focus group

. Free fruit and drinks in our studios

. Employee Referral Bonus

At Sumo, we want to enable everyone to bring their full, authentic selves to work every single day. We acknowledge that the games industry is far from perfect and a global organisation with people all over the world, from all kinds of backgrounds, we know it’s part of our duty to provide everyone at Sumo with a safe, accepting and affirming working environment. We encourage and welcome applicants from all backgrounds.

Sumo Sheffield is located just outside the city centre in Sumo Digital’s HQ, just off J34 on the M1 and a stone’s throw from the city’s primary shopping and leisure complex. With a multi-building campus comprised of industry-leading facilities, an onsite gym and subsidised canteen, Sumo Sheffield provides everything needed for all teams to create the world’s best games.

Sheffield is the fifth largest city in the UK and is easily accessible by road and rail from Leeds, Manchester and the Midlands. The city enjoys a wealth of facilities to suit a wide array of interests, including:

o World-class sports facilities

o Iconic theatres and galleries

o Multiple retail and shopping experiences

o Diverse and renowned restaurants and eateries

o The award-winning National Video Game Museum

Sumo Digital is an award-winning international family of studios. Recent releases from Sumo Digital studios include: BAFTA-Award winning Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Hood: Outlaws & Legends, Control Ultimate Edition on Google Stadia, Apple Arcade Award-winning Little Orpheus, Hot Shot Racing, WST Snooker and Spyder.