Design Director

📋 Description

• Company Description

• Smoking Gun Interactive, a Keywords Studio, is an industry-leading game development studio founded in 2007 by award-winning industry veterans. SGI is fearless in creating IP and boldly partners with renowned brands to develop a wide range of world-class, immersive titles and interactive experiences that resonate with strategy gamers worldwide and entertain millions of casual players every day.

• Job Overview

• As a Design Director with Smoking Gun Interactive (SGI), you’re a talented and passionate natural leader with at least five years of industry experience in game design leadership. You have a strong understanding of game mechanics and design philosophies to communicate a clear vision for the project. You will be the direct manager of Lead Designers and support them to ensure a positive culture among the design team and project. You lead alongside the team creating designs and documentation. You are a flexible and collaborative individual who is excited about motivating a multi-disciplinary team to achieve excellent results.

🎯 Requirements

• Develop, communicate and champion the creative vision for new and existing projects

• Collaborate with Senior Management to deliver and drive a cohesive vision for the projects.

• Work with production to ensure the vision is achievable within the project constraints.

• Generate and pitch new game ideas to external clients.

• Ideas must consider innovation vs reuse, scope/budget/schedule, commercial viability and target audiences

• Directly manage designers of all levels, including performance evaluations, mentoring and team leadership

• Actively participate in recruitment: resume and portfolio evaluations, tests, interviews and hiring decisions

• Lead the design for a product

• Build strong creative game designs that are original and imaginative.

• Create low level designs and documentation for a product

• Working with discipline heads and leads to provide feedback and ensure consistency of vision and creative goals among all aspects of design, art, audio, narrative, UI/UX, monetization and marketing

• Oversee or own the analysis of game KPI's, user testing, and market trends.

• Be a main conduit of design discussions between the clients and SGI.

• Supervise and approve work completed by the design and UX teams to ensure that features and designs are consistent with the vision for the game, as well as meeting quality standards and timelines

🏖️ Benefits

• 10 days vacation leave

• 5 paid days personal leave

• 7 paid sick days

• 5 paid parental leave days

• Life Insurance & Accidental Death & Dismemberment

• Dependent Life Insurance

• Long Term Disability (LTD)

• Extended Healthcare Benefit

• Dental Care

• RRSP matching

• Hybrid working

• Training & Development