Lead Game Designer
Los Angeles, United States
Design & Creative Direction – Creative Direction /
Project /
Hybrid
We’re looking for a Lead Game Designer to help bring a music-driven interactive experience to life. This is a project hire role, ideal for someone who’s excited about working at the intersection of gameplay, music, and creative storytelling. You’ll lead the design for interactive concert events that blends rhythm, storytelling, and action gameplay bringing fans closer to a beloved musical artist through boundary-pushing design and immersive interactivity.You’ll work closely with the Creative Director, internal teams, and the client to define and drive the gameplay experience, from first prototype to final polish. This role is both hands-on and leadership-focused: you’ll mentor designers, maintain the documentation, and guide the team to find the fun through iteration, prototyping, and tight collaboration.If you’re energized by the idea of crafting something with no precedent, know how to juice an experience until it sings (literally), and are equally comfortable presenting to clients and greyboxing in Unreal, we’d love to work with you.
Responsibilities
- Own the design vision across all gameplay and interactivity, balancing creative ambition with production realities
- Collaborate with the Creative Director to interpret high-level goals into actionable, player-first design
- Lead the design team while remaining hands-on greyboxing gameplay, scripting mechanics, and guiding iteration
- Maintain the GDD and communicate design decisions clearly to both internal teams and the client
- Work closely with engineers, artists, and sound designers to create reactive, rhythmic, audio-driven experiences
- Be a trusted voice on client calls communicating direction, managing expectations, and adapting to evolving priorities
- Review design work, provide thoughtful feedback, and advocate for the time and space needed to discover what’s fun
- Push for polish ensuring every detail feels intentional, responsive, and true to the artist’s brand
Requirements
- 5+ years of game design experience, with at least one shipped title
- Proven hands-on experience in Unreal Engine
- Strong balance of creative design and systems thinking you can build a moment and make it scale
- Clear communication and documentation skills; able to maintain and evolve a GDD
- Comfortable working across disciplines and interfacing with clients
- Self-directed, organized, and able to guide others while contributing meaningfully yourself
Would Be Nice
- Experience designing interactive concerts, music games, or experience-driven live eventsExperience with rhythm/music-based gameplay or deeply audio-reactive content
- Background in scripting (Blueprints, C++, or other relevant tools)
- UX sensibility and a passion for juiced, emotionally resonant experiences
$120,000 - $170,000 a year
Salaries offered are based on candidate experience, internal equity, and the level at which they are hired.
Magnopus is an experience focused technology company founded by a team of Oscar-winning artists, designers, and engineers from games, films, and other unusual places. We’re passionate about creating rich experiences that unite the physical and digital worlds.
Because we’re building the future, we endeavor to create a diverse, creative workplace where people from many perspectives collaborate across disciplines to create amazing things together. We invest in our employee's progression with ongoing education and mentorship opportunities through their guilds, and support their happiness and productivity through generous health care, time off, and other benefits.
We try to foster a safe environment where we can take risks, and learn from our failures. While we value individual talents, we favor collaboration more. We believe that the leadership of the company works for the employees, not the other way around. We feel strongly that our employees guide who we are as a company and the work we create, so we look for characteristics of curiosity, empathy, respect, honesty, and courage in every candidate.
Though we’ve delivered a lot of crazy stuff, here are a few you can check out at home:
