Design Director

About This Role

This design director role is for an experienced professional to join the Haven team, translating creative direction into balanced, scalable, and engaging systemic loops. The role involves owning the structural blueprint of the game, ensuring that player fantasy, narrative context, and creative pillars translate seamlessly into gameplay and progression systems. Additionally, the Design Director will be responsible for recruiting, leading, and organizing a design team, mentoring designers to execute the game vision to AAA standards.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate closely with the Creative Director to deconstruct abstract creative themes into clear, rationalized gameplay pillars and meta-structures
• Construct a comprehensive gameplay vision that weaves the game’s thematic fantasy and narrative context directly into cohesive mechanical elements
• Apply an innovative yet analytical approach to build robust moment-to-moment gameplay, short-term hooks, and long-term retention loops that perfectly suit the game's direction
• Define clear direction, intent, and structural boundaries for the design team, giving them a focused framework to maximize their creative freedom and innovation
• Establish high quality bars; review and validate all design work produced by the team to ensure mechanic solidity, balance, and alignment with the core vision
• Direct a team of game designers (Junior to Senior), conducting regular 1-on-1s, providing actionable performance feedback, and actively supporting their professional growth
• Maintain a structured, collaborative design environment that champions clear communication, objective analysis, and constructive criticism
• Act as the primary design ambassador for Engineering, UI/UX, Audio, and Live Operations, ensuring cross-functional clarity regarding design intent and vision

Requirements

• Minimum of 6+ years of experience in game design, with at least one shipped major AAA multiplayer title in a Senior, Lead, or Principal role
• Proven experience defining core loops during early conception and preparing complex systems for live-service stability
• Minimum of 2+ years of direct experience managing, mentoring, and developing game designers
• Unique blend of out-of-the-box creative thinking and sharp analytical skills, capable of inventing fresh ideas and grounding them into logical, quantitative rules
• Exceptional verbal and written communication skills; an expert ability to articulate, argument, and pitch design concepts clearly to both the development team and studio leadership
• Deep experience navigating multiplayer architectural constraints, including matchmaking logic, playlist structures, anti-cheat considerations, and progression balancing within a live-service context (broadly applicable beyond traditional PvP frameworks)