Lead Technical Designer

Splash Damage logo
Posted 07 September 2022
Salary Negotiable
LocationBromley
Job type Permanent
DisciplineDesign
Reference17926
Contact NameLawrie Brennan

Job description

Aardvark Swift are supporting Splash Damage with their recruitment of a Lead Technical Designer to bridge the gap between programming and design.
You will build prototypes, identify, and solve the technical issues and provide clean cross-discipline communication in the development of features representing Design’s interests and ensuring implementation meets the project brief.

Your responsibilities will be to…

  • Be a comprehensive feature owner, concepting and communicating new 
  • Prove new features by developing prototypes or providing accessible visualisations 
  • Maintain familiarity with the technical and design aspects of the game’s development
  • Act as a technical reference for designers in evaluating features
  • Define and promote best practices in production workflows across the studio
  • Mentor, coach, manage and direct other Designers and put forward team members to work on features, levels, or products 
  • Be part of peer-reviews and define and set the standard for good tech design
  • Collaborate with the Creative Director to establish the game vision and define quality targets
  • Utilise your team members and their skills to identify risk, build roadmaps and become a force-multiplier for your team
  • Have input to hiring decisions on the project
  • Communicate progress against quality, scope, and game vision alignment 
  • Regularly present the areas of the game you are responsible for to the studio and where required brief and prepare key product messaging for the media

The skills and experience you’ll bring to the role…

  • Industry experience in a Lead position
  • Worked on the full cycle for two or more shipped AAA console or PC titles with a multiplayer component, ideally a first or third-person shooter
  • Experience running a multi-person design team and able to motivate your team
  • Comfortable with mentoring and line-management and when required conflict-management
  • Feature ownership experience for one or more key elements on a project, identifying risks, blockers and proactively removing them
  • Scripting experience with UE4, Unity, or similar
  • Skilled cross discipline communicator, able to foster communication between technical and non-technical disciplines
  • Experience writing high quality and thorough design documentation and presentations
  • Skilled and effective prototyping in a live-development environment with effective iterative design
  • A deep understanding of game design including feedback, controls, balance, narrative, level design, game-feel, usability, social mechanics, and player motivation
  • Strong understanding of holistic systems, systemic design, emergent gameplay, and the place of procedural content generation in development
  • Comfortable working independently and using lateral thinking to solve problems

Non-essential but desirable skills…

  • Knowledge of players motivations, team psychology and cognitive biases
  • Production experience constructing feature road maps
  • Experience with C# or C++ or other compiled languages
  • Tool development, recognising where a need exists, designing and making the tool
  • Knowledge or experience of with Narrative Design, Level Design, Systems Design, Gameplay Programming

Splash Damage have a studio culture rooted in an open, friendly, and collaborative environment, they believe fostering a diverse culture is the best way to build both games and their studio. An approach supported by their numerous awards, including a ‘World-Class’ accreditation by Best Companies and being named one of the UK’s 100 Best Large Companies to work for.

While their offices are based in Bromley, UK, they offer progressive working patterns, including hybrid working and remote working to give staff the flexibility to decide how to do their best work.
 
Splash Damage also provide a whole host of perks and benefits including, visa and relocation support, performance-related pay system on top of your basic wage, enhanced pension contributions, life assurance scheme and private medical and dental cover.