Lead Game Designer

We are hiring a Lead Game Designer for a remote position who will own the design vision and quality bar across our games while building and mentoring a multidisciplinary game design team that consistently delivers high-quality, data-informed experiences. This is a product-focused leadership role responsible for improving retention, engagement, progression, and monetization by defining a clear design direction, maintaining a high standard of design quality, and driving a disciplined A/B testing and design R&D practice. The role is fully remote and requires at least 4–5 hours of daily overlap with Pakistan Standard Time (GMT+5) . This role is ideal for someone who: ● sets a clear design vision and holds a high quality bar without becoming a bottleneck ● is hands-on with systems design and design documentation, not only management ● builds and mentors designers toward domain specialization ● uses data and experimentation to prioritize and validate design decisions CORE RESPONSIBILITIES 1) Design Vision & Direction ● Own the design vision for all products, setting the design foundation and guiding designers at a high level. ● Align with Studio Head and Game Leads on where each game's design is headed. ● Co-own the design direction of each product with Game Leads; escalate major design pivots to the Studio Head. ● Turn ambiguity into clear design direction and build-ready decisions. 2) Design Quality Bar (Hands-on) ● Set and maintain standards for all design documentation, sheets, A/B tests, and playtesting protocols. ● Review specs, economy and progression sheets, and feature docs for completeness, clarity, and applied data analytics. ● Lead the design of major systems where needed: core loop, progression, economy, monetization, and LiveOps. ● Establish and maintain a clear design quality bar across the studio. 3) Design Team Development & Specialization ● Hire, onboard, and mentor game designers to be multidisciplinary and eventually specialize across three domains: ○ Gameplay, Retention & Engagement ○ Economy, Progression & Data ○ Monetization & LiveOps ● Run weekly 1:1s with all direct reports. ● Build successor capability: at least one designer ready to lead design on a product. ● Reduce the number of design decisions that escalate to Game Leads and the Studio Head. 4) A/B Testing Ownership ● Own the studio-wide A/B testing pipeline and set best practices for hypotheses, test documentation, analysis, and decision-making. ● Co-own A/B test and feature-shipping prioritization with Game Leads. ● Convert test insights into backlog priorities and measurable design actions. 5) Design R&D & Analytics ● Lead R&D in game design tools and best practices, data analysis pipelines and dashboards, and predictive modelling. ● Stay current on every product's analytics and dashboards. ● Learn and apply data analytics and predictive modelling to at least one product. 6) Playtesting & Design Fluency ● Involve the whole studio in frequent playtesting sessions (our products and beyond). ● Maintain a personal playtime practice of roughly 3 hours per product weekly, and feed notes into designer 1:1s. ● Attend design reviews as a participant and quality challenger, not the sole decision-maker. 7) Stakeholder Communication & Clarity ● Keep leadership updated with clear status, risks, and next steps. ● Write concise decision notes that reduce confusion and rework. ● Ensure the team has clarity on what success looks like for each design initiative. KEY DELIVERABLES (EXPECTED OUTPUTS) ● A clear, documented design vision and direction for each product. ● A maintained design quality bar: standards and templates for specs, sheets, A/B tests, and playtesting. ● A multidisciplinary design team with visible progress on each designer's specialization track. ● A running studio-wide A/B testing pipeline with quality hypotheses, documentation, and analysis. ● Design R&D output applied to live products (tools, dashboards, predictive models). ● Regular design reviews with clear decisions, action items, and ownership. DECISION RIGHTS & INTERFACES ● Design hires, exits, and specialization paths. ● Studio-wide design quality standards and review metrics. ● A/B testing methodology and pipeline. ● Design tooling and R&D investment. You co-own (with Game Leads) ● Design direction of each product. ● A/B test and feature-shipping prioritization. ● Major design scope decisions affecting team capacity. You co-own (with the Studio Head) ● Studio-level design strategy and big design decisions. ● Budget for design tools, R&D, and design-team headcount. You influence / support ● Retention, monetization, and player-experience improvements via design changes, experiments, and insight-driven recommendations. Individual designers retain authority on ● Specific feature design decisions within the agreed direction. ● Day-to-day design execution and documentation on their assigned product. Escalate to the Studio Head ● Anything affecting studio-level commitments (GP, ROI, capacity). ● Major design pivots on a product. ● Cross-studio or group-level design topics. REQUIREMENTS (MUST HAVE) ● 5-10+ years in mobile F2P game design, with meaningful time spent leading or mentoring designers. ● Shipped multiple live products or major updates, not just prototypes. ● Strong systems design fundamentals: gameplay, retention, progression, economy, monetization, LiveOps. ● Strong design documentation: specs, economy and progression sheets, and tuning plans that engineers and artists can build without guessing. ● A/B testing ownership: hypotheses, test design, analysis, and decision-making. ● Comfortable with product analytics and dashboards (e.g., ByteBrew, Adjust) to drive design decisions. ● Comfortable leading remotely and influencing without authority. ● Very strong English (written and spoken). NICE-TO-HAVES ● Hybrid simulation / management (sim/tycoon) game expertise. ● Experience building a multidisciplinary design team and specialization tracks from scratch. ● Familiarity with predictive modelling and building design analytics pipelines and dashboards. ● Familiarity with Unity pipelines and constraints (no coding required). ● Experience working with teams across multiple time zones. TOOLS WE USE ● Coda (documentation hub) ● Miro (flows, maps, UX collaboration) ● Asana (tasks + planning) ● Slack (daily communication) ● ByteBrew / Adjust (analytics & dashboards) WORKING MODEL ● Remote ● High-ownership role. We care about outcomes, not meetings. ● Must be available for key overlap hours with GMT+5 for reviews and alignment