[game] game designer, principal for [creative assembly]

Description As a Principal Game Designer, you will join our design team to help create an immersive, engaging game. In this role, you will take full, end-to-end ownership of multiple features, staying hands-on as you implement them in-engine yourself and driving their design, iteration, and documentation from first pass through to final polish. You will ensure every system and piece of content you deliver meaningfully upholds the game's pillars, themes, and vision. This is a high-impact opportunity for a highly experienced designer who combines systems thinking with exceptional content design, using content not only to craft engaging, well-balanced gameplay but also to tell stories through the environment and bring a rich world to life.

Working closely with design leadership and developers across all disciplines, you will own and set the quality bar for the features you are responsible for, support and inspire the wider team, and help deliver an exceptional player experience.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in Game Design roles on AA/AAA titles, including significant time in a Lead or Principal design position, with a proven track record of shipping games and seeing development through from start to finish.
• At least one shipped title in a Lead or Principal Game Designer position, with full ownership of major features or systems.
• Demonstrable ability to analyse gameplay features, identify strengths and weaknesses, and recommend clear, actionable improvements.
• Excellent content design skills, including using content to craft engaging experiences, environmental storytelling, and bringing a world to life.
• Advanced Excel skills and the ability to balance large data sets for unit balance, progression systems, and similar.
• Strong understanding of core gameplay systems, such as combat, abilities, economies, and AI behaviour.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills in English, with the ability to present ideas clearly and concisely to all disciplines and levels of seniority.
• Wide-ranging experience playing a variety of video games, with a genuine interest in why things work.
• Openness to feedback and the ability to integrate it constructively into your work.
• Proven experience leading, growing, and onboarding design teams, ideally scaling a team of 5–15 designers.
• Track record of defining and owning design processes, standards, and workflows across a team.
• Willingness to travel to the UK for training and to work alongside the core development team.

Responsibilities

• Take full ownership of multiple features, ensuring they are designed, implemented, and delivered to the highest quality.
• Drive features from first-pass implementation through multiple iteration loops to completion, owning iteration and balancing throughout.
• Create systems and content that deliver immersive, engaging, and valuable player experiences aligned with the game's pillars, themes, and vision.
• Create, maintain, and balance feature content, ensuring an engaging experience through well-crafted and well-tuned data.
• Produce and maintain clear, up-to-date design documentation for owned features.
• Partner directly with the Creative Director to translate the creative vision into clear design direction, and lead key design decisions.
• Work closely with Engineering, Art, Audio, QA, and other disciplines to ensure features are developed to the highest standard.
• Proactively communicate progress, risks, and changes to relevant discipline teams, especially where your work directly impacts them, and help solve problems as they arise.
• Maintain oversight of design progress across the project, ensuring design work is delivered to a high standard and on schedule.
• Analyse features throughout development, using playtest feedback and metrics to identify strengths and weaknesses, tune balance, and drive improvements.
• Mentor and support designers at all levels, stepping in to help more junior team members when needed and helping to inspire and bond the development team.

Nice to have

• Deep understanding of large-scale strategy franchises and of games in the strategy genres (grand strategy, RTS, 4X, etc.).
• Experience with gameplay scripting in Lua, C#, or another language.
• Experience using metrics and analytics to inform and improve design.
• Experience in other design areas, such as AI or narrative design.
• Knowledge of and interest in history.
• Great attention to detail and a strong visual sense.
• Experience building a design team from the ground up.
• Experience working with distributed or partner studio teams across locations.