Senior Technical Designer

House of How is seeking a Senior Technical Designer for a 6-month contract on a new internally developed AAA title, with potential for full-time employment. This role involves driving products to completion, prototyping, balancing, documenting, and designing features in collaboration with programmers and game designers. The designer will own features and ensure quality gameplay experiences, working closely with a Tech Design Director with extensive industry experience.

Must Have

• Drive gameplay, collaborating with artists, animators, and programmers.
• Implement prototype systems using Blueprint and C++.
• Design features with programmers and game designers.
• Create detailed project documentation.
• Identify workflow issues and offer solutions.
• Attend playtest sessions and provide solutions.
• 5+ years professional game development as Technical Designer.
• Shipped 2+ AAA or high-end AA games on PC or console.
• Heavy experience with Unreal Engine.
• Balance and tune multiple game elements and features.
• Prototype multiple game features simultaneously.
• Experience with scripting or visual scripting systems.
• Comfort with Perforce or Git source control.
• Located and cleared to work in US or Canada.

Good to Have

• A portfolio of work ready for discussion.
• Side skills in Programming, Art, Audio, Writing, etc.

We believe that a universe without fun would be a pretty dull place to exist… and that games are the best medium in the world to provide that fun. We love games which is why we make games. We make games to be a part of providing that outlet for escape, competition, exploration, social connection and so much more to a global audience of 3B+ players and growing.

We believe in authentic leadership, real conversations, making decisions, learning from mistakes but always continuing to move forward. We don’t want big company politics. We just want to do our best work with good people and have fun doing what we love.

We believe that our team performs best when everyone shows up as their authentic full self and we strive to empower everyone in the studio to be a game-maker. We encourage everyone to have an entrepreneurial mindset and we foster continuous learning and innovation.

In a time of so much industry consolidation, House of How is proud to be fully independent. We are based out of Seattle, Washington with remote game-makers all across North America, from British Columbia to New England, and we have a satellite studio in Boden, Sweden.

Starting out as colleagues at Microsoft Games, our leads worked with each other for years before setting out on a new adventure together. From humble beginnings, we grew slowly and carefully to ensure we could control our own destiny. We are now at 75+ people and growing rapidly as our industry reputation is bringing more and more projects to the studio. Come join our team and be part of the amazing growth story of House of How Games and help us to entertain the planet!

Job Description

House of How is looking for a Senior Technical Designer. As an integral part of our team, your responsibilities include driving products to completion, prototyping, balancing, documenting, and designing features in collaboration with programmers and game designers. You will own features and drive quality experiences to make our games great!

Project Details

You will join us as a Senior Technical Designer on a new internally developed AAA title.

You’ll work closely with our Tech Design Director, who has over 20 years of experience and shipped games like Gears of War 2/3, and was an early member of both Kinect and Hololens helping define new gameplay paradigms in new mediums, contributing to several titles.

This is a 6-month contract position with potential for full-time employment based on the success of the prototype.

Responsibilities

• Drive gameplay, collaborating with artists, animators, and programmers to make our gameplay feel great.
• Implement a variety of prototype systems in Blueprint, ideally being able to jump a bit into C++ as well.
• Design features in collaboration with programmers, game designers, and other teams.
• Create detailed and easy-to-use project documentation.
• Proactively identify workflow issues and offer solutions.
• Attend playtest sessions and be solution-oriented to any problems encountered.

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional game development as a Technical Designer.
• 2+ shipped AAA or high end AA games on PC or console
• Heavy experience in Unreal, as part of a prototype team you will need to be able to jump into many aspects of the engine.
• Ability to create detailed design documentation.
• Capacity to balance and tune multiple game elements and features.
• Experience in prototyping multiple game features simultaneously.
• Strong analytical and formal thinking, able to break problems down in their key variables and identify the relations between them.
• Capability to process, understand and implement feedback.
• Experience working with scripting languages, or visual scripting systems.
• Comfort in source control systems such as Perforce or Git.
• Written and spoken English fluency.
• Cleared to work and located in the United States or Canada.

Bonus Qualifications

• A portfolio of work where you are ready to discuss what you did, and why you did it.
• Side skills in Programming, Art, Audio, Writing, etc. If you have any gaming related side skills, please