Lead Mission Designer

Hangar 13 is an internal 2K development studio creating unforgettable AAA gaming experiences across all major platforms. As a Lead Mission Designer, you will be responsible for the pacing, gameplay execution, and narrative delivery of core mission content. This role involves leading and mentoring the Mission Design team, driving the design, iteration, and execution of critical game moments. You will also oversee and collaborate with external co-development partners, ensuring their work aligns with the creative vision, technical standards, and production goals, while requiring onsite presence in Brighton at least 3 days a week.

Must Have

• Own the high-level mission-flow, structure and pacing for a portion of the game’s critical path
• Partner with the Art and Narrative Leads to ensure a cohesive blend of storytelling, visual direction, and gameplay functionality across all mission beats
• Drive the implementation and scripting of story-critical gameplay moments, ensuring player clarity and polish
• Ensure all mission content adheres to established quality bar, pacing guidelines, and difficulty metrics through continuous review and iteration
• Develop and evangelize 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 (e.g., mission designs, flowcharts, best practices)
• Lead a team of designers to create a significant portion of the game content
• 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 content 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 Mission Design pipeline and meets internal quality standards
• Provide coaching and mentoring to the team
• Helped shipped at least one AAA game in Unreal in a Lead Mission 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

Good to Have

• 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

Who We Are

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 Mission Designer you will lead on the shape of the pacing, gameplay execution and narrative delivery of our core mission content. You will lead and mentor the Mission Design team, driving the design, iteration, and execution of the game’s most critical moments.

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 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 mission-flow, structure and pacing for a portion of the game’s critical path
• Partner with the Art and Narrative Leads to ensure a cohesive blend of storytelling, visual direction, and gameplay functionality across all mission beats
• Drive the implementation and scripting of story-critical gameplay moments, ensuring player clarity and polish
• Ensure all mission content adheres to established quality bar, pacing guidelines, and difficulty metrics through continuous review and iteration
• Develop and evangelize 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 (e.g., mission designs, flowcharts, best practices)

Leadership

• Lead a team of designers to create a significant portion of the game content
• 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 content 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 Mission 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 Mission 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.

SECURITY NOTICE - We have recently been made aware of increasing occurrences of bad actors posing as company HR personnel to gain information from "potential candidates", in the form of job interviews and offers. These scams can be quite sophisticated and appear legitimate.

Please know that Hangar 13 and 2K never use instant messaging apps to contact prospective employees or to conduct interviews.

If you believe you have been a victim of such a scam, you may fill out a complaint form at https://complaint.ic3.gov/ and https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ detailing as much as possible. We are taking these matters very seriously and apologize for any inconvenience.