Principal Game Designer, Hearthstone | Irvine, CA

Activision Blizzard

85d • $116,800 - $216,000

About The Position

Pull up a chair and join us by the hearth! Blizzard is looking for a Principal Game Designer to join the Hearthstone card design team. If you have a passion for the design and craft of card games and want to help shape the future of Hearthstone, we want to hear from you! Our team values creativity, collaboration, and a passion for delivering joyful experiences to our players. As a Principal Game Designer on the card design team, you will have the core responsibility and specialization in making fun-to-play, clear, and balanced cards for our upcoming expansions. Your player insight, analytical abilities, and creativity will help create player-focused designs that will surprise and delight millions of players all around the world. As with every design role on the Hearthstone team, you will be a champion of Blizzard's commitment to delivering world class quality. This role is anticipated to be a hybrid work position, with some work required to be on-site and some work-from-home. The home studio for this role is Irvine, CA.

Requirements

• 10+ years of professional game design experience, including at least 3 years in a content design role on a live service game in the CCG or strategy game genre.
• Familiarity with live service game design, including content pipelines, seasonal events, and time-limited challenges.
• Proven success leading multi-disciplinary teams in aligning goals and delivering content from initial concept through launch, while holding the bar high for quality and player impact.
• Deep understanding of card game mechanics, tuning, and player motivations.
• Strong project management skills and a great understanding of what players find fun.
• Ability to take initiative and manage responsibilities independently, demonstrating strong ownership and accountability.
• Being an advocate for simple, intuitive, and future-proof design.
• A good understanding of when to control scope and when to encourage exploration to find the right balance when aiming for a specific deadline.
• Confident in speaking up or giving voice to dissenting opinions constructively.
• Proven ability to work collaboratively within teams and foster productive partnerships across all departments.
• Strong documentation practices that clearly communicate design intent and build alignment.

Nice To Haves

• Experience playing a CCG at a competitive or high skill level.
• Active player of a variety of mobile titles, especially turn-based strategy games.
• Experience working with or helping define content creation pipelines and tools for fast iteration and designer-friendly workflows.
• Experience implementing game content using a programming or scripting language.

Responsibilities

• Create engaging cards and mechanics for Hearthstone’s future expansions that deliver strategic depth and fun while remaining approachable.
• Leverage your knowledge of Hearthstone and the universe of Warcraft to design and develop cards, concepts, and flavor that encapsulates the charm of Hearthstone.
• Script and implement cards using internal tools.
• Participate in playtests and foster a culture of collaboration, creativity, and continuous improvement by providing thoughtful feedback.
• Advocate for and explain product vision and design decisions both inside and outside the initial design team.
• Champion the player experience at every stage of development, ensuring gameplay remains fun, rewarding, and fresh through ongoing support and content updates.

Benefits

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance.
• 401(k) with Company match.
• Tuition reimbursement.
• Charitable donation matching.
• Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave.
• Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others.
• Relocation assistance if required to move geographic locations for the job.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees