Lead LiveOps Game Designer

Are you an experienced LiveOps game designer who thrives on long-term optimisation, player retention, and data-informed decision making? This is an opportunity to take ownership of the ongoing health and performance of a large-scale social live service game, shaping progression, economies, events, and social systems across the full player lifecycle.

About the role... You will own LiveOps design across a flagship social simulation experience built on a large-scale user-generated content platform. Sitting at the intersection of game design, LiveOps strategy, and analytics, this role focuses on continuously improving retention, engagement, social growth, and monetisation through iteration, experimentation, and close collaboration with cross-functional teams. This is not a one-off feature role. You will define systems, operate them live, analyse real player behaviour, and optimise them over time to ensure a healthy, sustainable game.

What you’ll be doing:

• Owning and improving core LiveOps KPIs including D1, D7, D30 retention, long-term retention, session frequency and length, ARPU, ARPDAU, conversion funnels, churn drivers, and viral growth.
• Designing hypotheses, running experiments, analysing cohorts, and translating insights into concrete design changes.
• Continuously improving FTUE and onboarding flows to increase early clarity and retention.
• Identifying friction points across the full player lifecycle and systematically removing them.
• Designing, balancing, and maintaining large-scale live economies, including soft and premium currencies, sinks, sources, and inflation control.
• Balancing progression pacing for different player archetypes such as casual, social, highly engaged, and high-value players.
• Designing monetisation systems that are ethical, sustainable, and retention-positive.
• Owning the LiveOps and live content calendar, including events, promotions, seasonal beats, and limited-time systems.
• Designing events that drive re-engagement, social interaction, and organic growth.
• Defining daily, weekly, and monthly gameplay rhythms that give players strong reasons to return.
• Running post-mortems on live events and rapidly iterating based on results.
• Designing systems that encourage inviting friends, forming groups, and social dependency.
• Improving organic growth through gameplay-driven social and viral mechanics.
• Working closely with engineers, artists, designers, and product leadership to deliver features end-to-end.
• Translating high-level goals into clear, implementable design specifications.
• Reviewing implementations to ensure design intent survives production constraints.
• Mentoring and supporting other designers as the team grows.

What we’re looking for:

• 5+ years of experience designing and operating live service games.
• A proven track record of measurably improving retention, engagement, and revenue on shipped titles.
• Strong experience with live economies, progression systems, and monetisation design.
• Hands-on ownership of LiveOps strategy, not just individual feature contribution.
• Strong analytical skills with confidence working directly with dashboards, data tools, and spreadsheets.
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional teams in a production environment.

Nice to have:

• Experience with large-scale social, sandbox, or online multiplayer games.
• Exposure to user-generated content platforms or creator-driven economies.
• Experience operating games with large, long-tenured player bases.
• Familiarity with experimentation frameworks such as A/B testing and cohort analysis.
• Comfort working in fast-moving, high-ownership environments.

Why apply:

• Shape the long-term health of a flagship social game rather than shipping isolated features.
• High ownership, high impact, and minimal bureaucracy.
• Design decisions ship quickly and are evaluated honestly through real player data.
• Influence not just a single game, but the foundations of a broader platform ecosystem.

If you’re a LiveOps designer who gets genuinely excited when retention curves bend upward because of something you shipped, we’d love to hear from you. Apply now, or reach out to Jack Baxter - jb@skillsearch.com.