Lead UX Designer

Kabam • Vancouver, BC

1d • CA$123,000 - CA$158,000 • Onsite

About The Position

At Kabam, we’re constantly raising the bar of excellence in free-to-play gaming. We hire for passion and diversity so that we can triumph in our collective skill. Our teams are made up of a fusion of personalities and interests bound together by a collaborative nature, fun-loving culture, and a drive to do what it takes to make great games. As Lead UX Designer, you lead and mentor a team of UI, Technical UI, and UX Designers on a mature, top-grossing mobile title while staying hands-on yourself. This is a player-coach role: you set direction for the team and you do the work alongside them, owning significant design problems end to end. You craft human-centered experiences grounded in interaction and visual design principles, working inside an established product, brand, and design system rather than from a blank page. You are highly organized, self-motivated, and an excellent communicator who moves easily between high-level strategy and low-level detail. You have an inherent desire to understand players and to represent them in the game. This role is a full-time, on-site position based 5 days a week at our Downtown Vancouver studio.

Requirements

• Education in Interaction Design, HCI, Cognitive Science, Psychology, or a design-related field with Human Factors.
• An exceptional portfolio demonstrating effective solutions to human-centered design and visual design problems, ideally including live or shipped product work.
• 8+ years as a UI and/or UX Designer or Product Designer in a professional capacity, preferably within video games.
• One or more shipped titles in a Lead UX Designer role, preferably in mobile free-to-play games.
• Direct experience designing for mobile, free-to-play, live-service games, including working inside an established design system and shipping into a live product.
• Comfortable operating as a player-coach: leading a team while carrying a meaningful hands-on design load.
• Expert-level command of Figma (the team's primary tool) and the Adobe Suite, plus strong prototyping skills. Familiarity with other industry tools (Sketch, and similar) is welcome.
• Deep understanding of target players: their needs, motivations, behaviors, and constraints.
• The ability to solve complex problems in resourceful, effective ways with human-centered design in mind.
• Experience with Inclusive Design and advocacy.
• An exceptional eye for visual design.
• Ability to own multiple features in parallel.
• Exceptional oral and written communication skills.
• Self-starter with excellent prioritization skills.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with Unity, including the UI pipeline, is a major plus.
• Ability to translate product KPIs into UX deliverables.
• Experience with data-driven (quantitative) design.
• Experience in user research.
• Experience working with licensed IP and brand guidelines.
• A passion for games and for Marvel.

Responsibilities

• Own significant design problems directly as a hands-on contributor, setting the quality bar by example.
• Define and drive UX outcomes for live features and longer-term product bets.
• Lead and mentor a team of UI, Technical UI, and UX Designers, developing them through direct collaboration and review.
• Work within the demands of a live-service cadence, balancing new feature work against ongoing events, seasonal content, and the existing UI framework.
• Own the UI and UX process, coalescing product, game design, engineering, art, and live ops needs into actionable artifacts.
• Present and communicate design intent and outcomes to stakeholders, driving designs to completion at the highest quality.
• Collaborate with the leadership team on capacity plans, development, and the product roadmap.
• Partner with data and UXR teams to build a deep understanding of players and create meaningful experiences for them.
• Partner with the UXR team to test and validate designs.
• Review and give feedback on the team's deliverables.
• Foster an environment for knowledge sharing and learning.
• Participate in staffing, recruitment, and team resource allocation.

Benefits

• Extended Health Coverage: effective day one, no waiting period! Our benefits cover health, dental, life, disability, and extended paramedical services such as vision care, mental health practitioners, massage, physiotherapy, acupuncture, and much more.
• DEIB Benefits: DEIB is important to us and to our people - that’s why our benefits include gender-affirming care, fertility care, and other hormonal treatments and drugs.
• Flexible Spending Accounts: our benefits are built on a flex credit model, so you’re able to choose the coverage levels that are right for you, and allocate the rest to a group RRSP/TFSA, Health Spending account, and/or Personal Spending Account.
• RRSP Matching: everyone retires eventually, and we help our people save for their futures with a contribution matching program once you reach 90 days with us.
• Commuter Benefit: we believe in the power of in-person collaboration, and want to support you in making it work for you! We provide a flexible, monthly cash allowance to help cover the costs of transit, parking, or even personal logistics like childcare and pet care.
• PTO and Parental Leave: we offer paid parental leave, flexible paid time off, paid time off for volunteering, sick leave, and holiday closures.
• Employee and Family Assistance Program: this program provides crisis management support, immediate mental health care, and generalized support for emotional, mental, and financial well-being.
• Telus Virtual Health: we provide increased access to remote healthcare providers for prescription refills or referrals from the comfort of your home.
• Learning and growth: We encourage people to grow both personally and professionally, and support this through regular lunch & learns and an education stipend.
• Pay transparency: We share with employees the pay range their role falls within and clear career maps to determine how they can grow within their role or level-up to a promotion.
• Cool spaces: Our offices are in Vancouver, Montreal, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Whether it's summers on the rooftop patio in Downtown Vancouver, or watching the fireworks in Montreal’s South Shore - we want our people to feel like their time spent in office is worthwhile!
• Giving back: Kabammers have a dedicated paid day off every year to volunteer to a cause close to their hearts. Some teams even band together for group volunteer days off-site!

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: Associate degree