Studio Design Director

Job Description

As the Studio Design Director at CaptureAge, you will closely collaborate with other studio leaders to manage a department of designers of varying experience and expertise. You will mentor and support designers across multiple project teams to meet development goals, and play a crucial role in the gameplay experience of various AAA titles in the Age of Empires franchise.

This is an exciting opportunity to work on a classic franchise and contribute to its success! We offer a fully remote work environment with flexible working hours.

Key responsibilities

• Lead the game design teams, including narrative, UI/UX, and gameplay, in conceptualizing and implementing game concepts that align with the company’s vision and objectives.
• Oversee the creation and iteration of engaging gameplay mechanics, narrative and character development, level design, and UI/UX designs.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams including art, engineering, audio, production, and QA to ensure a cohesive and polished final product.
• Mentor and guide designers, providing feedback and fostering an environment of creativity and professional growth.
• Stay up-to-date on industry trends and emerging technologies to ensure our games remain competitive and innovative.
• Collaborate closely with other departments to understand project requirements, planning, and execution of design tasks in alignment with project goals and timelines.
• Oversee the creation of comprehensive design documents and presentations that communicate design vision and strategies to stakeholders and team members.
• Drive efforts to gather feedback, including the prototyping process, ensuring that game ideas are tested and refined based on qualitative and quantitative data.
• Establish and maintain best practices for the game design process within the team and work with other departments to integrate those processes within the entire development pipeline.
• Manage the game design team’s resources, scheduling, and project timelines to ensure milestones and deliverables are met.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in game development, with a proven track record of designing successful games.
• Previous experience in a leadership role with the ability to inspire, motivate, and challenge a team.
• Strong understanding of game development tools and methodologies.
• Experience in agile project management and familiar with various project management tools such as JIRA, Confluence, and Azure Dev Ops.

Skills

• Exceptional creative and analytical skills.
• Excellent command of the English language, both written and verbal, to effectively communicate ideas and concepts.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills.

Application Process

Please answer our form that briefly outlines why you are interested in this role and why your experience and skills make you a good fit. To demonstrate your attention to detail, include the phrase “Battle Elephant” somewhere when filling the application form.

About CaptureAge

CaptureAge is a company that grew out of the Age of Empires community and is now partnered with Xbox Game Studios to provide game development services in AAA titles like Age of Empires II and Age of Empires IV. We have a small (35+) but growing team of passionate game developers, from artists to software engineers.

Inclusivity and Fairness
The people making games should be as diverse as the people playing them and we encourage applications from all backgrounds and identities. As a fully remote and internationally distributed company we are a team that enjoys and celebrates a diversity of voices and perspectives.

Compensation
Our compensation is determined by considering competitive market rates, experience, and cost of living. As a fully international company, we strive to ensure competitive compensation aligned with the local cost of living and market standards.

Fully Remote – Location / Time Zones
We are a fully remote company with team members in 20+ countries across many time zones. We prefer team members who fit within broadly American/African/European time zones (UTC-8 to UTC+3) but we are open to applications from anywhere.

Hours/Time Management
We have a flexible approach to time-management, and we believe in giving team members the opportunity to control their own schedules. We’d like to see a world in which work can fit around your life, not the other way around! In practice this means a few pre-agreed sync points a week, with the rest of your working time entirely up to you – we do not have mandatory core hours.

Async Biased
We lean towards async working arrangements and design our processes and working environment with this in mind.

Consensus Driven
We try to foster a genuinely collaborative and consensus driven approach to our work rather than top-down direction and micro-management.