Senior Game Designer

About Neonhex

Neonhex is a mobile games studio that makes simple, competitive games: easy to pick up and hard to put down. We care about approachable play, real competition, and strong in-game communities where players connect, compete and work together over months, not minutes.

We're a small team with a live game, real players and a fast loop from idea to live update. We use AI heavily across design, content and development. One person with good judgment and the right tools can ship what used to take a whole team.

The role

We're looking for a senior designer who has shipped, run and grown successful free-to-play games, and who thinks about the product, not just their features.

You'll own features end to end. That means spotting the problem in the data, designing the solution, building it with AI tools alongside the developers, running it as an A/B test, reading the results, and deciding what stays. You won't hand a spec over and wait. We want someone who gets features live.

What you'll do

• Own the core loop and progression: level and puzzle progression, difficulty curves, onboarding (the first-time user experience) and the first week of play.
• Design and tune the economy: soft and premium currencies, energy, rewards, boosters, and offers that feel fair and still make money.
• Build the social and competitive layer: clubs, team events, leaderboards, battles and the reasons players come back for each other.
• Run live ops: daily and weekly content, events, seasonal beats, and the calendar that keeps the game feeling alive.
• Ship features yourself with AI: prototype, write content and config, and build small features using AI coding and content tools. Work with engineers on the bigger systems.
• Make decisions with data: run A/B tests, read cohorts, retention (day 1, day 7, day 30), funnels and drop-off by level, and turn what you find into the next change.
• Lead design: write clear, short design docs, run design reviews, give useful feedback, and mentor other designers as the team grows.
• Shape the studio's direction for social, competitive mobile games.

What we're looking for

• 5+ years in game design, with at least one successful free-to-play mobile title that you helped ship and run after launch.
• A track record in a senior or lead design role: you've owned systems that moved retention, engagement or revenue, and you can explain how.
• Deep knowledge of F2P economies, monetization and live ops, and what makes players stay, spend and come back.
• Experience designing social or competitive systems such as guilds or clubs, team events, PvP, and leaderboards.
• Comfort with data: you can read a dashboard, design a clean A/B test, tell real signal from noise, and act on it.
• A builder's mindset with AI: you already use AI tools to prototype, write, analyse or build, and you're excited to ship features with them rather than only specify them.
• Product thinking: you can weigh a feature against what it costs and what it delays, and you're comfortable saying "not now".
• Clear communication in writing and in person, with English at a professional level.

Nice to have

• Experience with puzzle, casual competitive or skill-based games.
• Familiarity with JSON-driven content, remote config, or in-house content tools.
• Some scripting or technical design (any language) to get a prototype working on your own.

Why join us

• Real ownership: your features go live and you see the results within days.
• AI-native workflow: tools and freedom to ship far beyond a classic design role.
• Small, senior team: direct line to the founders and a real say in where the studio goes.
• A live game with real players, an in-house admin tool, and A/B testing built in.
• Hybrid in Bucharest, with flexibility.

To apply

• Send your CV and a short note about one F2P feature or system you shipped: what problem it solved, what changed in the numbers, and what you'd do differently. If you've used AI to build or ship something, tell us about that too.