Principal Designer

2K•Los Angeles, CA

7h•Hybrid

About The Position

As Principal Designer, you define the moment-to-moment player experience. You establish gameplay standards, systemic rules, and implementation metrics that ensure the game delivers a cohesive, high-fidelity AAA feel across traversal, combat, interaction, and camera behavior. Acting as the bridge between creative direction and engineering execution, you translate intent into playable reality and maintain consistency across the entire experience.

Requirements

10+ years in AAA Game Design: A proven track record in 3rd or 1st person blockbusters across multiple shipped titles.
Unreal Engine Mastery: Deep experience shipping gameplay systems in Unreal Engine, (blueprints, data driven architecture, and level streaming.)
Systemic Thinking: A focus on building scalable frameworks and ecosystems rather than one-off features.
The Bridge: To partner with art, animation, engineering, and tech design to synthesize feedback and rapidly iterate to meet the studio’s quality standards.
Forward Looking: A drive to improve workflows and leverage new technology to create unique gameplay experiences.

Responsibilities

Define the "Golden Rules" for systems and world-building including process, metrics, and standards, to ensure mechanical consistency across the entire game.
Act as the final authority on how the design team utilizes tools and engine features in partnership with the Gameplay Engineering team.
Maintain hands-on authority over gameplay feel through direct in-engine iteration across mechanics, traversal, level design, and gameplay scripting.
Define the technical implementation of Character, Camera, and Controls, establishing the exact metrics that create the game’s signature feel.
Ensure the player experience is cohesive and polished, maintaining a "Game of the Year" quality bar for all shipped features.