Lead Game Designer in Royal Leamington Spa

Based in the heart of Leamington Spa, Pixel Toys have spent over a decade pushing the capabilities of mobile and VR gaming. We have developed multiple award-winning titles, including: Warhammer 40,000: Freeblade, Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realm War; and we’re now excited to be exclusively working on a new game, unlike ANYTHING we’ve done previously!

As a forward thinking and innovative studio we are always looking for new technologies and techniques to develop and use in our games and make them even more engaging experiences for our customers. We are excited to continue to grow our team and are always on the lookout for highly talented and motivated individuals, who are passionate about gaming and excited to join us on our ambitious journey!

The Role: Join us as a Senior Game Designer and play a pivotal role in defining the heartbeat of our games, driving the features that keep players coming back while strengthening long-term retention. Working within a specialised pod, you will translate the vision into intuitive, rewarding systems that feel both authentic to the experience and sustainable within a live free-to-play environment. Your mission is to bridge the gap between ambitious product goals and tangible player experiences, turning high-level concepts into clearly defined, commercially viable systems that thrive throughout the entire lifecycle of the project; from the first spark of an idea to live operations.

You will regularly act as a central hub of creativity and logic, collaborating with Engineering, UX, Art, Audio, and QA to breathe life into your designs, ensuring every feature is practical to implement and delivered to an uncompromising standard, while working closely with product and analytics teams to guarantee a smooth launch that provides genuine value to both the players and the business.

As a Senior member of the team, you will represent the product vision within your team, making the thoughtful calls necessary to balance production realities with the long-term health of the game and the needs of our community. Your influence will extend beyond your immediate tasks as you proactively raise the bar for the entire studio, spotting opportunities to refine the player journey and pitching quality-of-life improvements that make our games stronger overall. Your sharp eye will be pinpointed on market trends as well as deep-diving into live player data, where you will validate your ideas and evolve features over time based on real-world behavior. Once a feature is live, your work is far from over; you will track performance, listen to player feedback, and iterate with speed to ensure the experience never stops getting better!

About you: You will join us as a seasoned Designer with experience in midcore mobile games, preferably within the RPG space. You possess a masterful understanding of Live Ops, progression systems, and the intricate mechanics required to drive long-term player engagement. Your expertise extends to the delicate balance of F2P (Free-to-Play) economy design and monetisation loops, always keeping a sharp eye on product KPIs to ensure features are as commercially successful as they are fun, with a proven track record of driving features from the initial concept phase all the way through implementation and into the high-stakes world of live operations, turning high-level product goals into clear, actionable designs.

As an elite communicator, you are capable of translating abstract ideas into practical specifications that your various other disciplines can execute with precision. Whether you are discussing high-level vision or the minutiae of system behavior, you ensure everyone is aligned on scope and priority. With a strong grasp of UI/UX principles and player-centered design, you always keep the user at the heart of your decision-making, backed by a relentless awareness of the mobile market and the competitive landscape. You also enjoy solving complex design puzzles, particularly when it comes to metagame systems and content balancing, and you are comfortable using data and player insights to guide your tuning decisions.

Beyond your technical skills, you bring leadership and proactive energy to the team. You are a natural mentor who enjoys guiding feature teams and raising the quality of work across the entire studio, with the clear potential to step into formal leadership roles. While experience with game engines like Unity is a bonus, your true strength lies in your ability to inspire those around you and your commitment to delivering the best possible experience for our players. You don't just follow trends, you analyse them; bringing fresh, validated ideas to the table that strengthen the product and the people behind it.

What can Pixel Toys offer: At Pixel Toys we are proud of the progressive, inclusive, and collaborative working environment we have created; a place where everyone has the opportunity to be themselves and is welcomed and valued for who they are and what they contribute. We have some fantastic benefits we offer our employees… Here are just some of them:

• Competitive salary, reviewed annually
• 25 days annual leave, excluding bank holidays
• Discretionary Bonus Scheme
• Up to 3 additional long service days (duvet days!)
• Private Medical Insurance (including optical and dental)
• Company Pension scheme
• Death in Service benefit
• Regular socials including epic summer and Christmas parties!
• Staff training and development
• Quarterly Wellness days (On-site massages and more)
• Flexi-time working hours

Recruitment selection is based on skills, experience and a good Pixel Toys mission and values fit.