Sr. Technical Game Designer, Games Studio Job at Netflix in Los Gatos

Netflix is one of the world's leading entertainment services with 278 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, films and games across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can play, pause and resume watching as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, and can change their plans at any time.

The Role

We're looking for a highly-skilled Sr. Technical Game Designer to join ISX studio's in-house development team focused on a narrative-driven, action-arcade game delivered directly to TV via Netflix's proprietary cloud streaming platform. In this role, you will craft core gameplay mechanics, develop game design tools, and iteratively improve our development pipeline for an innovative dual-screen game experience that will immerse players in a beloved Netflix IP punctuated by frenetic action gameplay with a light-hearted twist.

The right candidate will possess industry-leading craft expertise, meticulous attention to detail, and a proactive curiosity, enabling you to generate tangible player value and identify opportunities for enhancing and optimizing our design capabilities both now and in the future. Your technical expertise will be essential in creating new game design features in-engine, empowering you and fellow game designers to develop engaging and innovative gameplay experiences that captivate players of all ages.

THE TEAM

ISX's mission is to empower small teams of exceptional developers to build breakout hits, leveraging innovative gameplay married with beloved IPs and served seamlessly within the Netflix streaming ecosystem. We seek new teammates who care deeply about the experiences they create and the people they make them with, who bias towards action and are energized by the learning that comes with bold experimentation at an agile pace. As a part of Netflix, we strive to hire the best and value integrity, excellence, respect, inclusion, and collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Pipeline Innovator: Develop and streamline game design workflows to boost creativity and efficiency, empowering the team to deliver top-tier content.
• Deliver Kinetic Joy: Design and implement engaging mechanics, including player verbs, environment interactions, and upgrades that are viscerally satisfying and joyful to use again and again.
• Unleash the Horde: Craft diverse enemy behaviors, develop boss encounters, and script captivating in-game events that will drive emotional, story worthy reactions from players.
• Collaboration Catalyst: Partner across a multidisciplinary team of developers to seamlessly integrate, iterate on, and polish gameplay features - ultimately enabling our team to craft a cohesive and extraordinary game.

The Ideal Candidate

• Has shipped multiple games in a tech design, technical, or game design-focused role
• Is comfortable writing C# code to create gameplay directly in engine, in Unity or similar game engines.
• Possesses a deep understanding of game design theory and practices, especially as it relates to top-down action games
• Understands how to develop game designer-friendly tools and workflows leveraging Unity, C#, Google Sheets, Excel, etc.
• Communicates with authenticity, intention, and curiosity
• Gets excited by learning new skills, dashing to pitch in, even if this means flexing beyond this role's core responsibilities if it can help us win
• Plays broadly across multiple games of varied genres

Required Application Materials

• Resume

Location:

• Orange County or Los Angeles preferred
• Will consider remote applicants who are willing to travel for work related events and work a PST-oriented dev team schedule.

Our compensation structure consists solely of an annual salary; we do not have bonuses. You choose each year how much of your compensation you want in salary versus stock options. To determine your personal top of market compensation, we rely on market indicators and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience to determine your compensation in the market range. The range for this role is $90,000 - $600,000.

Netflix provides comprehensive benefits including Health Plans, Mental Health support, a 401(k) Retirement Plan with employer match, Stock Option Program, Disability Programs, Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts, Family-forming benefits, and Life and Serious Injury Benefits. We also offer paid leave of absence programs. Full-time hourly employees accrue 35 days annually for paid time off to be used for vacation, holidays, and sick paid time off. Full-time salaried employees are immediately entitled to flexible time off. See more detail about our Benefits here.

We are an equal-opportunity employer and celebrate diversity, recognizing that diversity of thought and background builds stronger teams. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.

Job is open for no less than 7 days and will be removed when the position is filled.