Simulation Game Director

Young Founders School; New York (NY); On-site; USD 400,000 - 500,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

NYC relocation assistance

High base salary

Job summary

Young Founders School is seeking a founding Game Director for their unique business simulation game, aiming to teach entrepreneurship through gameplay. You will shape the vision and lead a team to develop a fun and educational gaming experience.

This role requires a strong belief in the power of entrepreneurship and AI as tools for learning. Candidates must demonstrate a clear history of integrating these elements into successful projects.

The position is on-site in NYC, with a competitive base salary of $400K and potential for growth.

Qualifications

• Experience in game directing with a focus on educational gaming.
• Proven ability to lead and inspire a small team.
• Understanding of how to integrate real education into gameplay.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development of the first playable business simulation game.
• Hire a senior team and ensure effective collaboration.
• Create a fun yet educational gaming experience.

Skills

Game Development

AI Integration

Entrepreneurship

Team Leadership

Tools

Game Design Software

Job description

Founders School is a radical new high school launching Fall 2026 in NYC. Our promise is that students will make $1,000,000 in profit by graduation or their tuition is refunded.

But not every student can afford to attend, and there are countless people outside the high school age range who want to learn these skills. That's where you come in.

We are building the first business simulation game in which progress is gated by mastering real business skills. A genuinely fun sandbox where every meaningful upgrade is earned by passing a real pricing, marketing, or operations challenge.

This is the founding role for the game studio. You will own the vision, the product, and the team. We expect this game to be played by hundreds of thousands of people, not just teenagers, within three years, and to become the canonical artifact of how to teach hard skills through play.

If you don't believe entrepreneurship is one of the most positive forces in the world, don't apply. Our entire thesis is that teaching teenagers to build real, profitable businesses changes their trajectory and the trajectory of the country. If business makes you uncomfortable — if you think "founder" is a dirty word or capitalism needs to be apologized for — you will hate every meeting we have. We are unapologetically pro-business, pro-entrepreneurship, and pro-wealth-creation. That worldview has to be yours too, or the work will feel wrong every day.

If you think AI is overhyped or a threat to your craft, don't apply. We expect you to use AI in every layer of the build — design exploration, content generation, balancing, playtest analysis, art direction, code review. The hires under you will be expected to do the same. If you are not already obsessed with using AI to accelerate and enhance your game development, this role is not for you.

What you will actually do

You are the founding Game Director, working directly with the heads of Founders School. You will hire a small senior team and build the first playable sim within twelve months.

Your core directive is to take the concept we've developed, tell us where it's dumb and needs to be rethought, then lead bringing the shared vision we create with you to life.

The hardest part of this job: you have to make a game that is genuinely fun to play for ten hours straight and makes the player measurably better at running a real business. Most games do the first. Most edtech does the second poorly. Nobody has done both.

We'll be there to support you on properly integrating the business education, but we need you to take charge on making it a game students are eager to play and show off their progress in.

Success at 6 months

• A playable vertical slice of the game with initial skills fully implemented (skill tree → challenge → unlock → applied in sim)
• The first 100 teen playtesters report the game is fun before they realize they're learning
• You have hired the rest of the founding team and they are shipping

Success at 12 months

• Closed beta with 1,000+ teens; 30‑day retention above 40%
• Early Access launch ready for Fall 2027 (start of school year)
• The team you have built can ship a new sim game per year sustainably
• You have shipped at least one game that real people played and loved, ideally on a team of 10 or fewer

You believe AI is a craft amplifier and you use it daily in design and development work. You should be able to show us how you used Claude or GPT‑class tools to explore systems, write narrative, balance an economy, or debug a prototype in the last 30 days.

You believe entrepreneurship is one of the most positive forces in the world. This is not negotiable. It will come up in every conversation with our parents, our partners, our students, and our board.

Nice-to-have

• You have shipped a sandbox/sim game specifically (Two Point, Tycoon‑style, SimCity‑likes, Factorio‑adjacent, builder games of any flavor)
• You have designed or co‑designed for an audience under 18
• You have worked with a celebrity/operator IP collaboration before

What this is not

A typical game studio job. Founders School is a school, not a studio. The game is part of a larger education product stack. You will be in rooms with educators and entrepreneurs as often as you are in rooms with engineers.

A research role. We are shipping a real product to real teenagers on a hard timeline. If you want to think about game design without making one, this is the wrong job.

A cushy job. You are joining at zero. The expectations are extreme. The upside is becoming the named author of the canonical business‑skill game of this generation.

Compensation

$400K base. We're willing to pay well above market because we want a director who treats this like the most important thing they will ever build — not a side project, not a stepping stone.

And as you grow the team and hit the early milestones, there's room for this salary to increase aggressively.

We also cover NYC relocation. The role is on‑site in our NYC office, 5 days a week.