Senior Game Designer in Portsmouth

Location: Remote UK

Contract: Permanent

Hours: 37.5 hours (Core hours 10:00am - 2:00pm Monday - Friday)

We're here to help those who teach. It's what brings us to work every day. At Twinkl, we’ve been providing educators across the world with high quality, trusted teaching and learning resources for over a decade now. They’re all written and checked by our wonderful team of experienced educators, and there are hundreds of thousands of resources to download, with new ones added daily.

About the Role:

Our games are small in scope and designed to be delivered quickly, but there’s no shortage of challenges to make them more engaging, polished, and playful. We’re looking for an experienced Senior Game Designer to help evolve our portfolio of learning games across web and mobile platforms. You will play a key role in visual design and asset creation, shaping game concepts, and mechanics that inspire children, support educators, and deliver measurable learning outcomes. As a senior member of the team, you will lead design on more complex projects, mentor junior designers, and advocate for best practices in game design. If you're someone who enjoys designing meaningful, visually rich, fun experiences—and you love seeing your work go live regularly—this could be a great fit.

What You’ll Be Doing:

• Game design leadership: Own the end-to-end design of complex educational games, from concept and visual asset creation through to release and iteration.
• Design exploration: Lead ideation and prototyping workshops with cross-functional teams to explore innovative gameplay ideas.
• Visual and interaction direction: Partner with illustrators and animators to ensure consistency, polish, and age-appropriate aesthetics.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with engineering, education, and product teams to deliver fun, lightweight, production-ready games at pace.
• Player insights: Collaborate with UXR and education specialists to gather insights, run playtests, and translate findings into design improvements.
• Design systems & standards: Contribute to shared libraries of mechanics, UI conventions, and design documentation that scale across the game portfolio.
• Mentoring: Support and guide junior and mid-level game designers, sharing knowledge, feedback, and best practices.

What We're Looking For:

• Strong 2D illustration skills: Able to design and draw characters, environments, and UI suitable for children.
• Experience designing for games: You’ve contributed with visuals to shipped games.
• Basic understanding of user experience in games: You know how to design interactions that support clarity, accessibility, flow, and player engagement.
• Practical understanding of game-ready assets: You know how to prepare and export visuals that are optimised for small 2D games (correct sizes, formats, compression), and won’t overload the build, preferably for both web and mobile.
• User-centric: Have a deep empathy for young users and a strong commitment to creating visuals and experiences that are intuitive, accessible, and fun.
• Collaborative mindset: Comfortable working with developers, educators, and other artists in a cross-functional team.
• Proficiency in standard illustration tools: Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, or similar.
• Ideal but optional: Familiarity with 2D game engines like Unity or Godot; animation experience; or light scripting knowledge.

We’re interested in people who have:

• Bachelor’s degree in Game Design, Computer Arts, Illustration, or a related field.
• 5+ years of experience in game design, ideally with a focus on educational, serious, or interactive learning games.
• Strong understanding of game design theory, player psychology, and engagement strategies.
• Strong illustration skills and flexibility across multiple styles.
• Proven experience shipping games across web and/or mobile platforms.
• A portfolio showcasing game design work, including concept development, game mechanics, and user testing insights.
• Familiarity with game design tools such as Unity, Godot, or similar platforms is a plus.
• Proficiency in Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Knowledge of accessibility standards and inclusive game design practices.
• Experience mentoring or guiding junior game designers.

If you require a reasonable adjustment to the application/selection process to enable you to demonstrate your ability to perform the job requirements please include this at the foot of your covering letter. This will help us to understand any modifications we may need to make to support you throughout our selection process.

Benefits:

• In return for everything you can bring, we can offer you an exciting role in a fast-growing and dynamic business, with plenty of career opportunities.
• A friendly, welcoming and supportive culture. We believe work should be fun and always put people before the process.
• Diversity, inclusion and belonging - our Employee Network Program includes working groups for LGBTQ+, People of Colour, Disabilities (visible and invisible), Women in Tech and Working Parents.
• From day 1 - Westfield Health, 33 annual leave days per year (pro-rata) inclusive bank holidays, a "Me" day each year, a charity day each year, flexible working policy with opportunities to work from home and Twinkl subscriptions.
• Quarterly company awards programme.
• Seasonal events.
• Referral scheme.
• Cervical and Prostate screening.
• Company sick pay after 3 months of service.
• After probation - cycle-to-work scheme.
• Long-term service reward - Life insurance, enhanced pension contribution, enhanced maternity pay, enhanced adoption pay and enhanced paternity pay, long service award, long service annual leave.