About Splash Damage

Splash Damage is dedicated to crafting team-based games that ignite friendships as much as they do healthy competition and teamwork. We’ve forged enduring experiences within some of gaming’s most beloved franchises over the years and are now entering a bold new era fuelled by ambitious projects utilising both established and original IP, a move into self-publishing and expansion into new locations.

We're advocates for a healthy work-life balance and believe that our teams create the best work when they have a range of perspectives and experiences to draw from. We're committed to increasing diversity across our studio, fostering an inclusive environment to ensure everyone's voices are heard.

Our efforts have been recognised with several best employer awards over the years. Most recently, we were awarded the coveted 3-star ‘world-class employer’ accreditation by Best Companies and named the 58th best large company to work for in the UK, and the 29th best large company in London.

Due to the on-going COVID-19 situation, we're all currently working from home. We continue to hire across our projects and will set you up remotely for the time being.

We offer a comprehensive benefits package for you and your family, including:

Private Medical and Dental Cover for you and your family, along with the 24/7 Babylon digital GP service
Get mental health support from our trained Mental Health First Aiders or via our third-party counselling service
24/7 employee assistance helpline offering advice and support on a range of topics, including health, relationships, finances, and the law
25 days of annual leave, plus 8 public holidays and our annual closure between Christmas and New Year’s
Industry-leading fully-paid 30 weeks maternity leave & 10 weeks paternity leave
Enhanced company pension contributions
Our famous social events are open to you and your family to help you build friendships and have some fun along the way
Group life assurance scheme

The Role

As Splash Damage’s Lead Level Designer, you will be responsible for the level design of an entire product, driving end to end implementation across the team. You will establish and direct the vision for the levels, defining quality targets and ensuring the department are equipped to build epic, memorable, stunning maps.

You will realise and communicate the game vision throughout the studio, ensuring alignment across all disciplines. You will possess excellent written and verbal communication skills, and create and maintain level related documentation, ensuring all level content and processes are documented thoroughly. You will spend time with each team member, face-to-face, ensuring they understand the vision and level design, are fully engaged and “bought-in” to their work.

You will work closely with designers, programmers and artists to create and maintain fun, playable levels they can be proud of. You will drive frequent feedback sessions to gather feedback for you and your team and strive to provide constructive feedback to the wider team. You will collect and analyse playtest data and iterate on layouts accordingly in collaboration with environment and technical artists.

You will have a thorough understanding of the core gameplay mechanics and how the levels will deliver / showcase those mechanics, understand the project goals, and target demographic.

You will be expected to have a clear understanding of the technical constraints of the game engine, the capabilities and workflow of the game editor and level design pipeline and contribute ideas to help improve them.

You will maintain a focus on the gameplay aspects of the maps and ensure that focus is shared by the Level Design team and respected by the Environment Art team.

You will be expected to present your vision for the levels and your work to the team, upper management and the wider company at various stages and be happy to accept positive critique from all sources.

You will pro-actively work with the other level designers to share knowledge, review content and ensure consistency both on the immediate team and across the studio.

You will manage, mentor & coach Senior, Junior & Level Designers. You will verify task estimates provided by junior staff and in turn work with your lead to give your own accurate estimates for work as well as logging work in management software. You will provide input to Production / Management on project schedules throughout development to prioritise tasks / workload for the developers responsible for their assigned feature-set, in alignment with the product vision. You will articulate the impact of changes to the level design to the developers on your team.

You will be expected to regularly monitor the bug database and fix issues in a timely fashion to maintain stability and ensure that your team’s levels remain playable at all times. You will define and implement feature optimisations and tuning plans demonstrating a strong understanding of metrics and development restrictions; you will own the tuning for accountable features or levels.

Where necessary you will regularly and effectively communicate with any external partners or publishers; managing those relationships, presenting the creative achievements of the team, negotiating feature / change requests. You will communicate outwards to press, communities and fans in various formats from live appearances to pre-recorded interviews to forum engagement acting as both an evangelist and representative of the product and as an ambassador for Splash Damage.

Essential Skills and Experience

A passion for making and playing games
A deep understanding of all aspects of level design with mastery in many areas including; visual language, architectural composition, sign-posting, combat and encounter design, flow, game balance, delivery / support of game mechanics, on-boarding, difficulty tuning and pacing.
Extensive experience working in a senior/lead position and 2 shipped AAA current gen (PS4 / XBOX ONE) console or PC title that featured a multiplayer component, worked on from beginning to end
Leadership experience, including the running of running a multi-person design team; person-management, mentoring, line-management
Fierce attention to detail
The ability to work collaboratively with other disciplines and experience of being a key part of a leadership group
The ability to work independently without close supervision
Experience in creating first or third person shooters
Excellent verbal and written communication skills
A passion for environment design and architectural concepts
Experience of level-building using 3D level editing tools (Unreal 4, UnrealEd, Hammer, Radiant, etc.)
Experience of prototyping maps and gameplay mechanics using UE4, UE3, Unity, or similar
Experience writing high quality and thorough design documentation including diagram and flow-chart creation
Experience with source-control applications (SVN, Perforce, AlienBrain, etc.)
Experience in multiplayer level design
Strong problem-solving skills including lateral thinking
Deep player empathy

Preferred Skills and Experience

Presentation skills and experience with PowerPoint
Unreal 4 Blueprints, Flow Graph, or other visual scripting software
Knowledge of gameplay event scripting and entity setup
Experience with UnrealEd/UDK and Kismet
Traditional art skills
Experience with 3DSMax, Maya, or other professional 3D modelling software
Experience with Adobe Photoshop or similar
Experience with scripting or programming language
Experience with wiki-based design documentation
Undergraduate degree in Video Game Design, Computer Science, Marketing, Entertainment or a form of technical training
Experience of being the flag-bearer / champion for a product including giving presentations to press and at conferences / events
Experience running the live phase of a game as a service, including using telemetry / metrics to inform design and content decisions

Splash Damage is an equal opportunity employer. We believe our teams create better work when they have a range of perspectives to draw from, and we are committed to creating an inclusive working environment that celebrates diversity.