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Senior Mobile Game Designer (Kingdoms of Heckfire)

A Thinking Ape builds communities through mobile games with emergent social play and original IP. We released our first game in 2009 and have been profitable and growing every year since. We are a bottom-up driven company with small teams that have a big focus on ownership and data driven decision making. Our portfolio of games are growing and we are scaling our team to bring our games to more players.

The job

We are looking for a Senior Game Designer to join our team as we prepare for a year of explosive growth. You will be working with a full team of developers, artists, and community managers, along with support from our user acquisition and data science teams. Senior designers can expect to be working on system wide features and improvements as well as leading small, interdisciplinary teams and coaching junior designers.

The game

Kingdoms of Heckfire is a highly popular free-to-play Kingdom Builder/SLG game with market leading metrics. The game is a fresh take on the popular Kingdom Builder/SLG genre, with a passionate community, accessible gameplay and memorable characters.

The team

You will be working on Team Leviathan, home to our world-class live-ops team, which leads the industry in supporting and growing live games. We design, build, release and improve on huge new features and we aren’t afraid to try new things, take risks, and learn. The team is metrics driven and entirely autonomous in its decision making.

Things you will work on:

• Create new features and game systems that will help take Kingdoms of Heckfire to the next level and improve on existing ones to increase retention and monetization
• Balance virtual goods, game economies, in game currencies and new content
• Analyze user data and feedback to pitch and develop new content and game mechanics
• Build relationships with development and creative teams to facilitate idea generation and feature implementation
• Develop flows and processes to improve our content generation pipelines
• Champion new features by finding the best ideas, getting support from the team, and executing on a launch strategy that includes iteration and improvements
• Lead small teams of peers and take on a small number of reports

Who you are:

Above all else, you are someone who loves game systems and game economies. You have experience working in games and in the free-to-play business model. You understand the complexities of driving growth through leading game metrics and user acquisition. You understand the power of Kingdom Builder games and how they operate in the market. You are passionate about creating communities and excited to build a community in the SLG/Kingdom builder genre.

The perfect candidate will also be a passionate, high level player in the free-to-play Kingdom Builder/SLG genre and/or the fashion and design genre. You play them daily, understand how they monetize, and have a strong desire to be involved in creating one yourself. You understand how to coordinate a clan and have participated in high-level events. You enjoy end-game PvP and how to balance it in a way that is not too punishing for newer players. You have a keen understanding of what it takes to have a thriving, healthy player community within a server or shard.

• Worked on a free-to-play Kingdom Builder game and have a strong understanding of the game mechanics and monetization in this genre
• Driven the vision for a game and worked together with a team of designers, artists and engineers to bring it to reality
• Deep knowledge of systems design, combat balance and economy design
• Developed and launched new features, evaluated their success and iterated in a live environment
• Experience with live event creation and management
• Experience with data analysis, KPI impact analysis and metrics based decision making
• Experience working with customer feedback and growing game communities
• Understanding of mobile UX design including creating wireframes and user flows
• Understanding of prioritization of features and content including risk assessment
• Experience managing a team of designers
• You are a master at working with spreadsheets and understand the advantages of different approaches to organizing design data and getting it in game

Tell us if you have experience in:

• Marketing/user acquisition
• Working with a large community on a live game
• Previous game design experience in other genres
• Basic finance (P&L)
• Visual design/art
• Narrative design
• People and team management

While everyone on our team is different, to thrive here you should...

• Be self motivated, take pride in your work and enjoy huge amounts of ownership
• Set aside your ego and have wonderful arguments with your coworkers in order to create something better than any one person could individually
• Challenge your own assumptions and use data to make decisions whenever possible
• Be passionate about teaching others what you know and continuing your own growth every day
• Not be afraid to fail–you experiment and learn from your mistakes

What’s in it for you

At ATA you’re offered a flexible, safe, inclusive environment in which you have the autonomy to do your best work, surrounded by a strong team and with the encouragement of supportive leadership that doesn’t just care what you’re doing, but how you’re doing. You’re trusted, respected, listened to, cared for and valued. You take on thought-provoking projects and tackle fun problems alongside people who are equally invested in making meaningful contributions and seeing new ideas come to life. You know how your work aligns with the company’s goals. Your career is given the space and resources to progress. You accomplish things that make you proud. You are compensated competitively, your health and wellbeing are top priorities and you enjoy plenty of perks. You build communities, take ownership, have wonderful arguments, let the best ideas win and keep growing. You don’t just work for ATA, you are an integral part of ATA.

Our commitment to inclusion

At ATA we build communities. But community extends beyond our players: it also encompasses our employees and candidates. We support diversity in the workplace and always strive for inclusion. Part of this is selfish; we believe we’ll make better decisions if we’re able to tap into a variety of different perspectives. But we also care that our employees and candidates feel valued and comfortable being themselves. Please consider applying even if you don't meet every qualification. Experience comes in many forms and we value adding diverse perspectives to our teams.

Discover even more

Check out our story to find out how we got to where we are today, and learn about our culture by following @athinkingape on social. You can also listen to Kenshi Arasaki, ATA CEO & Co-Founder, talk about what it’s like to work here .