Lead Sound Designer

2K•Montreal, QC

About The Position

The Gearbox Entertainment Company is home to a world-class team that entertains the world with award-winning and genre-defining video games. Our games are entrenched with rich universes that are expanded upon via transmedia storytelling, live experiences, and consumer products. Gearbox Entertainment has become widely known for developing successful game franchises such as Borderlands, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, and Brothers in Arms, as well for continued development of acquired properties including Duke Nukem, Risk of Rain, and Homeworld. The company was founded as Gearbox Software in 1999 by a team of industry veterans and is headquartered in Frisco, Texas. The Gearbox Entertainment Company is proud to be part of 2K, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO). For more information, visit www.GearboxSoftware.com. We are looking for a Lead Sound Designer to help guide the creative, technical, and organizational execution of sound design across one or more projects. This role reports to the Director of Sound Design and partners directly with Audio Leadership, Technical Sound Design, production, and cross-discipline teams to help define, execute, and maintain the project's sonic direction. The Lead Sound Designer acts as the primary sound design point of contact for the project, ensuring audio goals, scope, priorities, quality standards, and needs are communicated and delivered. The ideal candidate is both a strong sound designer and a project level leader. This individual can create excellent content, guide and mentor other sound designers, and translate creative audio goals into shippable results.

Requirements

Previous experience in leading sound design efforts.
7+ years of professional game audio experience with at least one shipped title.
Adept ability at sound design, mixing, editing, and audio design techniques.
Strong soft skills and the ability to partner with audio leadership and cross-discipline teams.
Excellent understanding of the end-to-end game development pipeline.
Must be receptive to sound design feedback from peers and departmental leadership.
Awareness of game industry trends, tools, techniques, and player expectations.
Well versed at how to create clear and thorough documentation such as style guides or system designs.
Ability to communicate creative goals, risks, and priorities across disciplines.

Nice To Haves

Audio training and/or degree in audio production.
Experience with scripting or programming languages.
Post production mix experience.

Responsibilities

Serve as the primary sound design point of contact for an assigned project.
Partner with Audio Leadership to define, refine, and execute the project's sound design goals.
Drive day-to-day project sound design execution while maintaining alignment with broader audio direction.
Maintain a cohesive sonic identity across features and systems, ensuring sound design pillars, tone, and standards are upheld.
Translate high-level audio direction into clear feature plans, creating sonic style guide documentation and identifying and driving sound design palette building sessions.
Work with production to identify and communicate audio scope, risks, dependencies, and priorities.
Help identify workflow and pipeline challenges and partner with appropriate teams to resolve them.
Coordinate with outsourcing partners and provide feedback, reviews, shotlists, style guides, and quality control.
Lead, mentor, and support sound designers across assigned projects, features, or content areas.
Review sound design work and provide clear, constructive feedback that raises quality while supporting team growth.
Help maintain team morale, trust, and creative momentum through strong communication and thoughtful leadership.
Support onboarding, knowledge sharing, and alignment around project audio standards.
Design, edit, process, and mix high quality sound effects.
Collaborate with audio leadership on project sound design pillars, tone, mix direction, standards, and technical goals.
Take on high level of complexity in sound design work. Will be expected to handle the most forefront game feature sets of audio design such as weapons, character audio, and more with complete autonomy.
Create and maintain sound design documentation, including style guides, onesheets, shotlists, and palette references.
Lead and contribute to sound jam palette building sessions and creative exploration sessions.
Implement content into Wwise and UE5.
Record original source and lead or support recording sessions, defining the projects source recording needs.
Partner with Technical Sound Design on system behavior and implementation workflows.
Locate, diagnose, and troubleshoot issues and audio bugs.