Lead Technical Designer

At Activision, we strive to create iconic brands in gaming and entertainment, including Call of Duty®, Crash Bandicoot™, Tony Hawk’s™ Pro Skater™, and Guitar Hero®. The company focuses on advancing gameplay with popular titles and sophisticated technology, aiming to create an inclusive environment with passionate, creative, and diverse teams.

• Proven extensive experience shipping AAA titles, including lead or senior technical design roles.
• Demonstrated leadership experience driving technical design teams, processes, and pipelines.
• Strong vision setting and communication skills to align and inspire teams around shared goals.
• Hands-on experience with various game engines.
• Deep understanding of gameplay systems and player experience, supported by extensive gaming experience.
• Proficiency in scripting gameplay logic using C#, Lua, and Python.
• Fundamental understanding of C++ to review and modify code on a limited scale.
• Strong self-motivation, ownership, resilience, and a positive, solution-oriented mindset.

Bonus points for:

• Strong understanding of complex mathematics as applied to gameplay systems.
• Experience developing multiplayer games and familiarity with client–server architectures.
• Strong knowledge of performance considerations and optimization related to game content implementation.

• Partner with leadership across engineering and content teams to define, communicate, and maintain the overall vision and direction for gameplay and content design.
• Own and evolve the technical design vision, rules, and principles for the entire game.
• Lead technical design strategy across systems, ensuring scalability, quality, and long-term maintainability.
• Drive cross-disciplinary collaboration on technical solutions, pipelines, and tools supporting gameplay and content design implementation.
• Take end-to-end ownership of technical design for gameplay prototypes, from ideation and rapid iteration to final production-ready implementation.
• Manage, mentor, and develop technical designers, including onboarding, coaching, performance feedback, and career growth.
• Analyze, pitch, prototype, and develop technical design features, systems, and tools for an unannounced AAA project.
• Set standards for technical design documentation, including one-page pitches, system outlines, tools and pipeline briefs, and other communication artifacts.
• Leverage deep technical expertise to implement systems using proprietary tools and workflows.
• Act as a key technical design stakeholder, ensuring alignment across gameplay, art, engineering, and production.
• Provide regular, constructive feedback across team features and the game as a whole.
• Stay current on industry trends, including emerging genres, new design techniques, and advances in audiovisual and technical excellence.

Activision encourages applications from women and members of underrepresented groups, emphasizing a commitment to diversity and inclusion.