Game Design Manager

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Joining Hyper Luminal Games at a senior management level will be an exciting, challenging, and rewarding experience for individuals looking to make an impact and grow a top-class department within their discipline. You will be the leader and mentor for a team of talented and ambitious developers, looking to be guided and inspired by someone at the top of their field.

At Hyper Luminal Games we will look to you to own your department; defining the development culture within your team and leading by example in upholding the studio's values. You will be an ambassador for HLG and set the standard for communication, attitude, and delivery across your department and within the wider studio environment.

You will be the owner of the design department; driving culture, innovation, and delivery across all aspects of design within the studio. You'll steer and mentor a team of designers, from fresh graduates through to highly experienced senior staff. You'll have the opportunity to work with the latest game engine technologies, ensuring the games and designs we deliver are of the highest quality. You'll drive design choices on big brand games and original IP across a multitude of genres, platforms, and player expectations.

You will be expected to manage multiple projects; with a variety of team makeups, project goals, client needs, and creative and commercial requirements. You will engage directly with our partners and clients, to relay project goals, pitch ideas, navigate and resolve conflict, and ensure successful delivery, while meeting high levels of quality standard and timeliness.

If this feels like a place where you can thrive and grow, with the team, the projects and the studio, then apply for this position and let's explore working together!

Experience

Essential

• 8+ years of experience in game design, expertise and a proven track record on multiple shipped titles.
• Strong background in team collaboration, capable of guiding, motivating, and developing team capabilities.
• Deep understanding of both the mobile and console game space, with experience delivering multiple titles across various genres and development environments.
• Demonstrated ability to manage, plan, and estimate tasks within technical, time and budget constraints.
• Proven experience acting as a key vision holder across several projects.
• Experience in all stages of game development from concept to implementation to user testing and beyond.
• Skilled at using analytics, player feedback, and case studies to drive meaningful changes for gameplay and feature improvements.

Desirable

• Experience with rapid prototyping and iterative design methodologies.
• Excellent ideation skills, able to generate, pitch and deliver creative design concepts effectively.
• Traditional pipeline of learning through a University Environment.

Skills and Abilities

• Exceptional communication skills, with the ability to lead your department to achieve studio goals.
• Inspirational leadership style that motivates and inspires the team to reach and exceed the highest possible standards of performance.
• Ability to give clear, actionable feedback that drives improvement.
• Excellent interpersonal skills, able to build and maintain relationships with stakeholders, partners, and team members at all levels.
• Exceptional problem solver with foresight to anticipate potential challenges and deliver up with creative, practical solutions.
• Exceptional planning and organisational skills, with the ability to manage and prioritise individual and departmental workloads efficiently.
• Excellent documentation skills including mock-ups, flow charts, prototyping or similar.
• High attention to detail, ensuring quality and consistency in all design elements.
• Drives the creation and implementation of new processes and pipelines and helps to further improve existing ones.
• Demonstrated ability to provide leadership and guidance across all aspects of games design, from high concept tasks to tweaking and balancing game data in engine.

• Extensive knowledge of multiple game mechanics and systems across a variety of genres.

• Confident presenting and advocating for design ideas with strong influencing skills.
• A high-degree of creativity and proven ability to generate innovative concepts, ideas and gameplay mechanics.

Duties and Tasks

• Lead, inspire and mentor the design department to create fun, engaging and innovative games that provide rich player experiences and leave a positive lasting impression.
• Meet regularly with the Creative Director to provide project updates, raise team challenges, and discuss upcoming developments within the studio pipeline.
• Lead the design department to identify optimal and efficient workflows and ensure the creative vision of a project is achieved.
• Define the creative culture within the design department and lead by example in championing the studio's values.
• Manage the development of your team; tackling conversations around output, career progression, conduct, motivation, and advancement.
• Work closely with external partners and clients; communicating progress clearly and consistently tracking the health of the project and future feature designs.
• Liaise with other department Managers to improve studio-wide process, share knowledge, and maintain the highest delivery standards.
• Continuously work to improve design documentation and workflows in response to project needs and industry developments.

• Research, analyse and improve upon game vision, keeping up with trends and user preferences.
• Devise ideas that tackle problems in simple, elegant ways and always put the player experience first.

• Conduct post-mortem project reviews to evaluate success and challenges,and apply insights and learnings to improve future processes and establish best practices.

Benefits

At Hyper Luminal Games we are passionate about our employees and provide development opportunities for all our staff. We take pride in the fact that we understand individual reward systems for all our team members, encompassing not only remuneration but responsibility, recognition, and individual learning.

We offer competitive salaries, a generous pension scheme, life insurance and 28 days of holiday increasing yearly to a maximum of 33 days after 5 years.

Life as a Luminary

Creative collaboration is the key to success at Hyper Luminal; team members are given a range of responsibilities, to enable team driven games development process. Your role at Hyper Luminal is to ensure our games and software utilise a 'best in class' approach, helping the studio to continually raise its quality bar and reach beyond what is generally expected of a smaller development team.

We value your commitment and strive to ensure that all team members are included in a range of after-work activities to help prosper curiosity and creativity, including exciting games nights, delicious dinners and unique team-based events.

We look forward to welcoming you into the Hyper Luminal Team.

Please note, that we are unable to provide sponsorship for visa applications. You must have pre-existing Right to Work in the UK to be considered for this role.