Lead Game Designer

As Lead Game Designer at Kabam, you will lead the design discipline, translating business objectives into a clear, growth-oriented design vision and championing it across the studio. You'll collaborate with other leads to shape the product roadmap, ensuring design integrates effectively within a multidisciplinary team. Responsibilities include upholding design standards, empowering the team through clear objectives, fostering collaboration, providing mentorship, and optimizing design processes for efficiency and growth in free-to-play gaming.

Must Have

• Hold and communicate a growth-oriented design vision, collaborating with stakeholders.
• Represent design in product roadmapping, using intent-driven design.
• Accountable for ensuring the design team is properly managed, fostering growth and mentorship.
• Directly support and coach design leads, cultivating leadership and managerial qualities.
• Maximize design team efficiency to optimize output and create growth opportunities.
• Set, uphold, and champion design standards, balancing quality and expediency.
• BSc / BA or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years in game development, with 4+ years in mobile free-to-play.
• 3+ years of leadership or management experience.
• Strong communication, collaboration, and leadership skills.
• Strong understanding of technologies associated with game development and production (capabilities and limitations).
• Remain current on competitor products, industry trends, and techniques in game design.

Good to Have

• AAA large-scale development experience.

Perks & Benefits

• Extended Health Coverage (health, dental, life, disability, paramedical services) effective day one.
• DEIB Benefits including gender-affirming care, fertility care, and hormonal treatments.
• Flexible Spending Accounts for RRSP/TFSA, Health Spending, and/or Personal Spending.
• RRSP Matching program after 90 days.
• Paid parental leave, flexible paid time off, paid time off for volunteering, sick leave, and holiday closures.
• Employee and Family Assistance Program for crisis management and well-being support.
• Telus Virtual Health for remote healthcare access.
• Learning and growth opportunities through lunch & learns and an education stipend.
• Pay transparency with clear role pay ranges and career maps.
• Cool office spaces in various global locations.
• Dedicated paid day off annually for volunteering.

At Kabam, we’re constantly raising the bar of excellence in free-to-play gaming. We hire for passion and diversity so that we can triumph in our collective skill. Our teams are made up of a fusion of personalities and interests bound together by a collaborative nature, fun-loving culture, and a drive to do what it takes to make great games. And this is where you come in…

As Lead Game Designer, you are the leader and representative of the design discipline in the team. You are responsible for translating business objectives into a clear, growth-oriented design vision. You are the champion for that vision at the studio or company level. You work with other discipline leads to craft the future product roadmap and you ensure that design functions as part of a large, effective multidisciplinary team. You uphold design standards and empower the design team through clear objectives, effective collaboration, creating buy-in, and providing mentorship. You are the guardian of our design process; constantly pushing for optimization and efficiency so your team can do their best work.

This role is a full-time, on-site position based 5 days a week at our Montreal studio.

In this role, you can expect to:

• Key Accountabilities

• Hold and communicate a growth-oriented design vision:
• You collaborate with business owners, discipline stakeholders, and the design team to craft a growth-oriented, future-looking design vision for the game. You are responsible for ensuring that the vision is clear and communicated upwards and downwards. You uphold that vision and are responsible for ensuring design adheres to that vision. You adjust the vision as business realities change and clearly communicate adjustments.

• Product Roadmap:
• You represent design in product roadmapping. You use intent-driven design to bridge the gap between player and product to drive the roadmap forward. You advocate for the needs and priorities of the design team and ensure they have proper support. You collaborate with stakeholders for accuracy and to create buy-in.

• Design Management:
• You are accountable for ensuring that the design team is properly managed. You work with design managers to foster an environment of growth, mentorship, and coaching. You build and help lead a culture of accountability, supportiveness, and cohesiveness. You ensure your designers feel they are part of a safe environment that allows them to take risks, learn and grow. You ensure succession plans are established and critical vulnerabilities are triaged.

• Design Leadership Coaching:
• You directly support and coach the design leads, acting as a sounding board and actively cultivating leadership and managerial qualities. You ensure your design leads know the business and product goals and understand how their work impacts those goals. You establish, train, and mentor your direct successor (or successors).

• Maximize design team efficiency:
• You are responsible for ensuring the design team’s time is being spent efficiently to maximize output, create growth opportunities, and ensure sustainability. You collaborate with team leaders to understand priorities and build team literacy in what work is impactful and what work isn’t. You ensure the team is using efficient tools and processes and you advocate for them when external support is needed.

• Set and uphold design standards:
• You set, uphold and champion design standards. You ensure the design team and their initiatives use intention-based design to craft game features and content that meet the needs and expectations of the product and the players. You balance quality and expediency to create a design culture that is both detail-oriented and flexible.

To be successful in this role, your background includes:

• BSc / BA or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years in game development, with 4+ of those being in mobile free-to-play.
• 3+ years of leadership or management experience.
• Strong skills in Communication, Collaboration, and Leadership.
• Has strong understanding of technologies associated with game development and production (capabilities and limitations).
• Remains current on competitor products, industry trends and techniques in game design.
• AAA large-scale development experience a plus.

Our success is due to the hard work of our people. We share our success with our people through flexible benefits and reward programs, sweet swag, snacks, and more. Here’s a look at some of the support we provide our people:

• Extended Health Coverage: effective day one, no waiting period! Our benefits cover health, dental, life, disability, and extended paramedical services such as vision care, mental health practitioners, massage, physiotherapy, acupuncture, and much more.
• DEIB Benefits: DEIB is important to us and to our people - that’s why our benefits include gender-affirming care, fertility care, and other hormonal treatments and drugs.
• Flexible Spending Accounts: our benefits are built on a flex credit model, so you’re able to choose the coverage levels that are right for you, and allocate the rest to a group RRSP/TFSA, Health Spending account, and/or Personal Spending Account.
• RRSP Matching: everyone retires eventually, and we help our people save for their futures with a contribution matching program once you reach 90 days with us.
• PTO and Parental Leave: we offer paid parental leave, flexible paid time off, paid time off for volunteering, sick leave, and holiday closures.
• Employee and Family Assistance Program: this program provides crisis management support, immediate mental health care, and generalized support for emotional, mental, and financial well-being.
• Telus Virtual Health: we provide increased access to remote healthcare providers for prescription refills or referrals from the comfort of your home.
• Learning and growth: We encourage people to grow both personally and professionally, and support this through regular lunch & learns and an education stipend.
• Pay transparency: We share with employees the pay range their role falls within and clear career maps to determine how they can grow within their role or level-up to a promotion.
• Cool spaces: Our offices are in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Montreal, Prince Edward Island, and Seoul. Whether it’s summers on the rooftop patio in Downtown Vancouver, watching the fireworks in Montreal’s South Shore, or trying local eats in Downtown Charlottetown - we want our people to feel like their time spent in office is worthwhile!
• Giving back: Kabammers have a dedicated paid day off every year to volunteer to a cause close to their hearts. Some teams even band together for group volunteer days off-site!

The typical hiring range listed above is specific to candidates located in Montreal. The salary will be determined based on your knowledge, skills and competencies, and you’ll have room to grow after you join!

If you’re interested in the position but your expectations don’t fully align with the provided range, we still encourage you to apply! Considerations may be made based on your experience level.

Excited by this opportunity? Kabam is dedicated to growing our diverse and inclusive workforce, so if your past experience doesn’t perfectly match the listed requirements we encourage you to apply anyways - you could be a great fit for this or other positions.

We invite you to apply now and start the conversation with us. Together, we can create and support some of the best games ever made and entertain the world!

About Kabam

Kabam is a world leader in developing entertaining, immersive, and highly social multiplayer games, bringing high-quality graphics, next-generation technology, and revolutionary gameplay to players around the world.

Kabam’s games, Marvel Contest of Champions, Shop Titans, and more have generated hundreds of millions of downloads and have received multiple awards including Apple’s Editor’s Choice and Google Play’s Best Game of the Year.

Founded in 2006, Kabam has studios and offices in Vancouver, Montreal and Charlottetown in Canada, Los Angeles and San Francisco in the United States, and in Seoul, South Korea. Kabam is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Netmarble Games.

Kabam is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer committed to building a diverse and equitable workplace, and inclusive environment for all existing and potential employees. Employment decisions are based on candidate qualifications and business need, not race, color, ancestry, place of origin, age, sex (including pregnancy), gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, political belief, religion, creed, marital or family status, medical condition, genetic information, physical or mental disability, military or veteran status, prior criminal conviction or any other protected class in accordance with federal, state or provincial and local laws and ordinances. Accommodations will be provided as requested by candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.