Technical Game Designer

Description

The studio is in Kirkland, Washington, and was founded more than 25 years ago by industry veterans.

It is a wholly owned subsidiary of a larger parent company and sits within a major publisher's label.

The team has shipped games across most genres and platforms and now focuses mainly on mobile.

The team is hiring a Technical Designer to work with artists, engineers and product managers on free-to-play mobile games.

The role sits between design and engineering and takes a feature from first pitch to live build, covering the spec, a Unity prototype, service integration and post-launch tuning.

This role is onsite in Kirkland, WA, four days a week.

Responsibilities

• Create new gameplay, such as limited-time events, full game modes and mini-games that add variety and energy to the core loop.
• Take features from pitch to working prototype, shipped build and the live tuning that follows.
• Write specs that work as executable instructions, covering intent, constraints, acceptance criteria, edge cases and failure states.
• Build and refine agentic workflows across the design pipeline, including research, competitive teardowns, spec drafting, prototype scaffolding, balance sweeps, content authoring and telemetry analysis.
• Prototype in Unity so concepts can be played, and check them against live service systems.
• Work with cross-functional partners to balance fun, difficulty and monetization in your designs.

Requirements

• Have 5+ years of game design experience, mostly on free-to-play mobile games, and a Bachelor's degree in a related field or comparable relevant work experience.
• Use agentic tools and workflows daily, not just occasionally.
• Be skilled at making those workflows succeed: building context and prompts, breaking down tasks, designing tools and permissions, checkpointing, running evaluation harnesses and measuring quality over time.
• Have production experience building mobile games in Unity.
• Understand the mobile market at an expert level from a design view, including economies, data analysis, back-end environments and live infrastructure.
• Know game development pipelines end to end.
• Communicate very well, write clear design documentation and work effectively with engineers and artists.
• Ideally, you have shipped several F2P mobile games in a design or technical design role.

Conditions

Regular, full-time position based onsite in Kirkland, WA, four days a week.

Base pay at the start is expected to be between $88,700 and $131,300 per year in Kirkland, WA.

Final base pay depends on market location and individual factors such as job knowledge, skills, experience and other business considerations.

The role is at-will, and the company may change base salary and other pay, compensation or benefit programs at any time, based on individual or team performance or market factors.

The company cannot sponsor or assist with visas for this role, so you must be legally authorized to work in the United States without current or future employer sponsorship.

The company values diverse experience and encourages everyone to apply.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision and basic life insurance.
• 14 paid holidays per calendar year.
• Paid vacation of 15 to 25 days per calendar year, or eligibility for the discretionary time off program.
• Up to 10 paid sick days per calendar year.
• Paid parental and compassionate leave.
• Wellbeing programs for mental health and other wellness support.
• Family planning support through Maven.
• Commuter benefits.
• Reimbursement for fitness-related expenses.
• Possible bonus and/or equity awards, plus eligibility for the 401(K) plan and Employee Stock Purchase Program, subject to individual factors.