Lead Systems Designer - Raven Software

$97,200 - $179,900/Yr

Activision - Middleton, WI

Full-time - Senior

Middleton, WI

Publishing Industries

About the position

Your mission is to inspire, mentor, and lead the system design team towards creating highly tuned player-first experiences that will be enjoyed by millions of gamers across the globe. You will be a trusted gatekeeper for performance, efficiency, and quality. You will provide your team with guidance, goals, opportunities, and resources. Our Lead Designers are role-models that not only manage the team through challenge and change, but also build up individuals into highly engaged, efficient, and effective teammates. You must thrive in a challenging and often ambiguous environment. An agile and flexible mindset is also necessary since this position actively partners with a variety of internal and external partners. Above all, we are looking for an innovative and dedicated leader to help tell our story.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with Creative Directors, Designers, Engineers, Artists, Producers, and Animators to deliver world-class game systems.
• Research subject matter relating to objectives to ensure an authentic experience.
• Be a proactive self-starter that can independently execute high-level direction.
• Clearly and effectively pitch designs and features using multimedia tools.
• Create, review, and maintain design documents and systems specifications with an eye toward systems design and then provide verbal and written assessments of the same.
• Uphold system designs during a live environment.
• Define team goals, action plans, and schedules for the project.
• Be a trusted gatekeeper for performance, efficiency, and quality.
• Lead, task, mentor and conduct one-to-one meetings with other System Designers.
• Provide your team with guidance, goals, opportunities, and resources.
• Use scripting tools to create, iterate, and balance game mechanics and systems.
• Play builds of games in-progress and provide concise and prioritized feedback to both internal teams and external partners.
• Interface with other teams to ensure systems are understood and utilized.
• Champion best practices and advocate towards streamlining tools and processes.
• Possess a comprehensive understanding of the design process spanning all facets of the game.
• Work closely with our user-testing teams during play-balancing to provide expert feedback.

Requirements

• 8 total years in the games industry working in a system design capacity.
• 5+ years as a Lead Designer.
• Experience with programming/scripting languages.
• Demonstrated experience working on first-person shooter (FPS) game titles, with a deep understanding of the genre's mechanics, player expectations, and design principles.
• Solid understanding of systems and gameplay design with ability to clearly discuss modern trends.
• Ability to write high and low-level documentation (PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Visio, etc.).

Nice-to-haves

• Prior experience working on a games-as-a-service product.
• Experience with visual software (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.).
• Profound understanding of the Call of Duty franchise and Warzone.
• Comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the F2P games space.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance.
• 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching.
• Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave.
• Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others.
• Relocation assistance if the Company requires that you move geographic locations for the job.