Lead World Designer

2K Czech; Brighton; On-site; GBP 45,000 - 70,000; Full time

Job summary

An internal game development studio seeks a Lead World Designer to own world design and player experience for their latest game. This role involves leading a design team, collaborating with external partners, and ensuring alignment with the studio's creative vision. The ideal candidate has experience with AAA games in Unreal and possesses strong leadership and collaboration skills. This position requires being onsite at the Brighton studio three days a week.

Qualifications

• Experience leading at least one AAA game development.
• Ability to manage workflows and integrate with external teams.
• Strong interpersonal skills to collaborate across disciplines.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and creation of game worlds.
• Supervise design documentation and ensure high standards.
• Collaborate with production to meet project deadlines.

Skills

Collaboration skills

Leadership in game design

Prioritization and scheduling

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Design or related discipline

Tools

Unreal Engine

Confluence

Job description

Hangar 13 is an internal 2K development studio that crafts unforgettable AAA gaming experiences across all major platforms. With studios in Brighton (UK), Brno, and Prague (CZ), we work as one team to bring to life narrative-rich games that keep players immersed. Each of our locations provides the opportunity to work with some of the most talented developers in the industry, on creatively challenging and exciting projects, in a diverse and welcoming environment.

Job Summary

As a Lead World Designer you will own the design, structure, and player experience as well as lead the team on our latest game world. You will drive the creation of all world content and the core features that bring our environment to life.

In addition to leading internal team members, you will also oversee and collaborate with external co-development partners, ensuring their work aligns with our creative vision, technical standards, and production goals.

Please note that we do require someone to be onsite at our Brighton Studio at least 3 days a week.

Duties and Responsibilities

Design

• Own the high-level world map to support key player paths and systemic gameplay
• Define the World Design visual language (e.g., object density, traversal speeds, level of detail) and metrics, and ensure their consistent application
• Partner with the Art, Mission and Narrative Leads to ensure a cohesive blend of environmental storytelling, visual direction, state management, and gameplay across the World’s Golden Path and all Districts
• Supervise the design and implementation of World Districts, World Activities, non-Mission areas and their Population
• Evangelize World features across the project, develop best practices for the designers to utilize in their content
• Analyse, validate and incorporate feedback from the team and external user testing
• Author and maintain design documentation

Leadership

• Lead a team of designers to shape the game world
• Foster a collaborative and high-performance culture by empowering the team to take ownership and deliver high-quality work
• Review, debug, and provide constructive critique on designer-created content, focusing on player experience, performance, and adherence to design guidelines
• Collaborate with Production to ensure delivery of features, systems and assets, on time and to required quality
• Oversee and direct the workflow of external partners and co-development teams, ensuring their output integrates seamlessly with the internal World Design pipeline and meets internal quality standards
• Provide coaching and mentoring to the team

Essential Skills, Attributes and Experience

• Helped shipped at least one AAA game in Unreal in a Lead World Design role or similar
• Ability to drive prioritization and scheduling of work for the whole department
• Strong collaboration skills, able to work well with team members from other disciplines and in other locations
• Proven experience in leadership topics and coaching individuals

Highly Desirable

• Experience managing outsourced or distributed content teams
• Strong documentation skills, proficiency with Wiki systems or Confluence is a plus
• Bachelor’s degree, or equivalent experience, in Design or other related discipline

Hangar 13 prides itself on the diversity of its team members, partners, and communities. For this reason, we remain committed to providing equal employment opportunity in all aspects of the employment relationship, from recruitment and hiring through compensation, benefits, discipline and termination.

As an equal opportunity employer, we are also committed to ensuring that qualified individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation(s) to participate in the job application and/or interview process, to perform their essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us if you need to request reasonable accommodation.