Overview

Ninja Theory, a BAFTA award winning game developer in the Xbox Game Studios group, is looking for a world class Designer to join our development team at our Cambridge studio.

We pride ourselves on hiring the best talent in the industry to craft life changing art with game changing tech.

We’re a diverse and perfectionist team who focus on the quality of our work above all else and demand excellence in all that we do yet maintain a culture that empowers deep focus and teamwork, rewards innovation and recognizes individual growth.

This is an amazing opportunity to be involved at the very start of the development of one of our recently announced titles and requires an experienced, talented and passionate designer with a demonstrable track-record as a Creative Lead or Lead Designer on multiple AAA titles.

You will work closely with the Creative Director in ensuring the overall design requirements are met on schedule and to excellent quality. You will lead sub-teams and pods as and when required.

Your Role And Responsibilities

    • Take an active and vocal part in creative discussions with the Creative Director and other team members, ensuring contributions are useful, constructive and appropriate.
    • Take ownership of designated areas of design work (for example a level or mechanic) and work with other disciplines to prototype, build, iterate and polish these areas. Document these areas and liaise with other disciplines to ensure their output remains consistent with the initial vision.
    • Maintain a high standard of creative and technical knowledge in all areas of design and assist junior designers where required.

Requirements


Essential criteria

    • 5 or more years experience in a senior game design position.
    • Design experience in environment layout, mechanics, narrative, cameras, puzzles and tools.
    • Ability to generate innovative and creative game systems and level designs.
    • Ability to accurately communicate designs through detailed documentation with the use of written English, visual aids and other supporting material (such as grey boxing, illustrations, graphs, diagrams, spreadsheets, etc).
    • Strong prototyping skills to represent an idea in engine even when support from other disciplines is not available.
    • Extensive experience with 3D game editing tools.
    • Practical experience in gameplay scripting.
    • Understanding of how a piece of gameplay can be enhanced or improved upon and unwavering in the desire to make those positive changes happen.
    • Clear understanding and championing of what makes a positive user experience in any area of design responsibility (pacing, gameplay mechanics or sequences, in-house tool design etc).
    • Leadership skills, and ability to organise and task other team members, including those in design and in other disciplines.
    • Strong technical and creative problem-solving skills.
    • Degree in an appropriate subject (e.g. Games, Product Design, Computer Science).
    • Experience with Unreal Engine 4.
    • Experience with Maya, Blender or solid understanding of 3D modelling learnt from other packages (Max, etc).
    • Rudimentary animation skills (In 3D packages or in engine tools, e.g. Matinee for UE3, UE4 Sequencer).
    • Experience or solid understanding of basic programming principles.
    • Experience using Visio, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Photoshop.

Desirable criteria

  • Degree in an appropriate subject (e.g. Games, Product Design, Computer Science).
  • Experience with Unreal Engine 4.
  • Experience with Maya, Blender or solid understanding of 3D modelling learnt from other packages (Max, etc).
  • Rudimentary animation skills (In 3D packages or in engine tools, e.g. Matinee for UE3, UE4 Sequencer).
  • Experience or solid understanding of basic programming principles.
  • Experience using Visio, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Photoshop.

About Ninja Theory

Ninja Theory Ltd. was formed in 2004 by four partners, including current Directors Nina Kristensen (Chief Development Director) and Tameem Antoniades (Chief Creative Director). We pride ourselves on striving for the highest production values, continually pushing the boundaries of technology, art and design to create evermore meaningful and memorable video game experiences.

We're based in Cambridge, UK and are the creators of five-time BAFTA award-winning Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, the No.1 selling DmC: Devil May Cry, Develop Award winning Enslaved Odyssey to the West and BAFTA nominated Heavenly Sword.

We're proud to have worked with a long list of collaborators from creative industries outside of video games, including Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings, King Kong, The Hobbit), Alex Garland (The Beach, 28 Days Later), Nitin Sawhney (BBC’s Human Planet), Noisia (Split The Atom) and Combichrist (Making Monsters). As well as partnering with talent from the world of music, literature and film, Ninja Theory pioneered the use of Performance Capture in video games.