Senior Technical Designer, (Games) Spry Fox Game Studio

Netflix is one of the world’s leading entertainment services with 278 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, films and games across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can play, pause and resume watching as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, and can change their plans at any time.

The Role

Senior Technical Designer- Spry Fox Game Studio

ABOUT OUR TEAM: 

Our motto is, “make the world a better place”; and we try to do this through the games we make. Invention is part of our DNA at Spry Fox. Whether it’s by designing MMOs that encourage the development of friendships and discourage toxicity, or by designing unique puzzle games that promote English language learning; we’re always asking ourselves “how does this game improve your life?”

Spry Fox strives to be a studio that is a pleasure to work for, an important but not dominating part of your life, and recognizes crunch is a negative, counter-productive industry practice — something to be learned from and avoided in the future. We want you to have friends, family, hobbies, and a life outside of work. We want you to love your colleagues and know that they support you 100%. We want you to be proud of what you do and how you do it.

For 10+ years, we’ve been fully remote with Foxes scattered all over the world. To make that work well, we all try to be online and communicative from 10am to 2pm PST to ensure that we have enough overlapping work hours with our team; otherwise, our schedules are flexible and fully under our individual control!

Now that we’re a part of Netflix, we can do what we love with more support and without having to worry about how to monetize! We’ve always been focused on making thoughtful, original games… now more than ever. 

ABOUT THE JOB

As a Senior Technical/Generalist Designer at Spry Fox, you will plan, build, iterate and improve systems and gameplay central to the player experience in our live service game. You’ll create new non-violent activities, events and help integrate them into a giant collection of life sim systems. You’ll work with leadership to drive design and implementation on cross-functional strikes teams working on key features. 

We welcome candidates from anywhere in the Americas (time zone-wise, these locations have proven workable for our studio in the past.)

• Plan and lead design and development of new gameplay features.

• Coordinate with cross functional strike teams of programming, art, production and design. 

• Develop new dynamic objects for player activities and events. 

• Exercise existing content creation tools to make delightful content. 

• Suggest and potentially implement smart toolchain improvements that improves team efficiency

• Facilitate shared vision and team direction in ambiguous design spaces

• Balance pacing and economics across complex multiplayer systems.

• Build out and tune progression and rewards.

• Demonstrate taste when making aesthetic design decisions for cozy, multiplayer games for adults. 

• Make smart tradeoffs between player experience, tech, team and schedule constraints. 

Requirements

• 5+ years of professional game design work experience, including at least 2 years as a senior designer. 

• Shipped at least 2 commercial game in a game design role with a team of 10+ people

• Strong English communication skills, both writing and verbal.

• Scripting or programming experience

• Deep experience with system and economy design

Nice To Have

• Experience working on an MMO or open world game.

• Familiarity with 3rd person adventure games.

• Familiarity with the life-sim genre, especially of Animal Crossing or other cozy games

• Experience planning efficient and timely updates for a live service game

• Experience working with procedurally generated content 

• Social design experience with an emphasis on emergent multiplayer joy

• Strong cross discipline collaboration and mediation skills. 

• Experience with Unreal and creating blueprints

Our compensation structure consists solely of an annual salary; we do not have bonuses. You choose each year how much of your compensation you want in salary versus stock options. To determine your personal top of market compensation, we rely on market indicators and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience to determine your compensation in the market range. The range for this role is $100,000 - $300,000 USD.

Netflix provides comprehensive benefits including Health Plans, Mental Health support, a 401(k) Retirement Plan with employer match, Stock Option Program, Disability Programs, Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts, Family-forming benefits, and Life and Serious Injury Benefits. We also offer paid leave of absence programs.  Full-time hourly employees accrue 35 days annually for paid time off to be used for vacation, holidays, and sick paid time off. Full-time salaried employees are immediately entitled to flexible time off. See more detail about our Benefits here.

We are an equal-opportunity employer and celebrate diversity, recognizing that diversity of thought and background builds stronger teams. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.

Job is open for no less than 7 days and will be removed when the position is filled.