Principal Systems Designer, Live Service (Social Systems, Events and Onboarding) | Fully Remote

What we are looking for:

We are building the live-service meta for an upcoming game, and three of its most important systems do not yet have a principal design owner: the events that give the game a weekly heartbeat, the social structures that make progression something players do together rather than alone, and the onboarding that has to teach both. This role owns the first two outright and is the design partner on the third.

This is a design, maintain, and iterate role. Our event event architecture, our LiveOps operating model, and our community structures are about to be defined. You would be the person driving those and designing them, alongside the other Designers, PM and UX team.

This is a fully remote, principal-level individual contributor role on the Meta & Live Service team, reporting to the Design Director, Meta & Live Service.

What we will do together

Events and LiveOps design systems

• Design events: a growing set of reusable, configurable formats that scale to a meet our audience needs.
• Design events end to end: entry conditions, currencies, consumables, reward pacing, and how events feed and are fed by the wider meta rather than sitting beside it.
• Assist in defining the configuration surfaces and tooling requirements that make running an event a config job rather than an engineering job.
• Help set the standard for how events are specced, instrumented, reviewed and iterated after they run, and retired.

Social and community systems

• Design various community and social systems that will help curate a strong community that grows together.
• Partner with the various teams to see how each feature can be added to a social layer.
• Design the end-to-end social funnel experience

Onboarding partnership

• Partner with the FTUE pod and designer to sequence meta systems into onboarding
• Define nudge, notification and re-entry logic, including the return path for lapsed players.
• Help define the telemetry that tells us whether onboarding taught what it was supposed to teach.

What you will bring:

• 8+ years in game design, including 4+ years designing for and operating a live-service title after launch. Post-launch operating experience matters more here than shipping experience.
• Demonstrated ownership of event systems, social systems, or both, on a title you supported live, not only specced.
• Fluency in progression and economy design. You can build and defend the model, not only describe the intent.
• A track record of designing systems that scale through templates and configuration rather than through bespoke content per beat.
• Comfort influencing across Production, Engineering, UX, Narrative and Product without formal authority, and the judgement to know which decisions are yours and which are not.
• Genuine use of telemetry and player feedback to iterate on live systems, including examples of things you changed because the data disagreed with you.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.

Nice to have

• Tools and configuration design experience: you have specced the editor, not only used it.
• You have run a live game through a rough stretch and can talk specifically about what you changed and what you would do differently.

Interested… a bit about Escape Velocity:

Escape Velocity is a team of passionate, talented developers working at a studio that offers excellent benefits, on what we believe is a once-in-a-career project with a committed publisher. But that doesn't necessarily make us unique. What does make us special?

We value the time, energy, and talent of our players and our colleagues. We want every hour spent developing and playing our games to be an incredibly rewarding and worthwhile use of your time. To that end, we are 'Fully Remote' and support team members nearly anywhere in the world.

We prioritize honesty, even when that means sharing bad news. We strive to give everyone autonomy so they can determine how best to work and play, and we care more about what you bring to the game and studio than how many hours you're clocking. We're dedicated to building a culture of play, which not only makes us better game makers, but also strengthens the bonds between us all.

We believe in constant improvement across all areas – from the game itself to our production design – and are constantly re-evaluating how we spend our time to ensure that we're not wasting yours and we're all always working on the most important things.

A few benefits you can expect from us:

• A generous PTO allowance
• Summer and Winter holidays studio closure (separate to PTO allowance)
• Private Medical & Dental Healthcare
• Private Mental Health scheme
• A generous annual Health & Wellbeing allowance
• Discretionary Studio Bonus
• Top range tech for your home set up
• Other benefits based on your region

How to apply:

Click apply and complete an application along with a Resume / CV. If we would like to move forward with your application, a member of the Recruiting Team will reach out to you and guide you through our process.

Escape Velocity is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to hiring, promoting, and compensating employees based on their qualifications and demonstrated ability to perform job responsibilities.

Applications will be considered regardless of age, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, belief, race, or any other protected category.