Lead Game Designer

Good day! Extreme Developers is looking for a practicing Lead Game Designer who works with game systems, economy, and balance themselves, and leads a small team of subordinate Game Designers (up to 2 people) for the Frontline 1942 project.

Main areas of work:

• Designing and improving the core gameplay of a mobile shooter: combat, controls, shooting, match tempo, weapon feel, hit feedback, bot behavior.
• Tuning and developing mobile shooter controls: sensitivity, dead zone, aim assist, recoil, micro-aim, camera response, ease of shooting at a moving target.
• Working with weapon TTX and combat balance: damage, rate of fire, accuracy, spread, recoil, TTK, weapon effectiveness at different distances.
• Developing player progression: first levels, first upgrades, weapon unlocking, rewards, power curve, motivation to return to the game.
• Feature ownership from idea and concept to implementation, testing in builds, and impact assessment on metrics.
• System design: the game as a system of interconnected features — core gameplay, meta, economy, monetization, liveops, and retention.
• Working with GDD, TDD, balance sheets, configs, references, mechanics descriptions, and acceptance criteria.
• Describing game interfaces and rough user flows for new features and improvements.
• Analyzing mobile f2p shooters and similar genre references, searching for solutions with clear justifications.
• Participating in playtests, gameplay debugging, build checks, identifying issues with controls, combat, balance, and first session.
• Planning and launching regular updates, events, battle passes, offers, new and existing features.
• Working with metrics: retention, match completion, session length, progression funnel, payer conversion, ARPDAU, offer conversion, and other product indicators.
• Managing a small team of game designers: task assignment, solution review, documentation quality control, and task completion.

What's important to us:

• Game designer experience of 5–6 years on commercial f2p projects.
• Mandatory experience with shooters, preferably mobile FPS / TPS / action multiplayer.
• Deep understanding of mobile f2p shooter design: controls, shooting, weapons, TTK, bots, matchmaking, first session, progression, economy, monetization, liveops.
• Practical experience in tuning weapons, combat balance, progression, rewards, economy, and offers.
• Understanding how core gameplay quality affects retention, monetization, and long-term project development.
• Ability to analyze data and draw conclusions based on statistics, not just personal feelings.
• Confident skills in maintaining GDD/TDD and writing tasks for development.
• Experience working with balance sheets, configs, and game settings.
• Extensive game experience specifically in shooters and mobile f2p projects.
• Willingness to work hands-on: playing builds, checking controls, reviewing metrics, editing spreadsheets, reviewing tasks, participating in debugging.
• Proactiveness, independence, and the ability to justify decisions.
• Portfolio or project descriptions with specific roles, areas of responsibility, and results.

Will be a plus:

• Experience working on mobile f2p first-person shooter games.
• Experience developing an already launched live project.
• Experience improving the first session, early retention, and a beginner's first battles.
• Experience tuning mobile controls, aim assist, recoil, hit feedback, and shooting feel.
• Experience working with battle passes, events, offers, and liveops content.
• Experience conducting A/B tests and assessing the impact of changes on metrics.

What we offer:

• Competitive salary and flexible schedule.
• A small project and an autonomous team where the Lead Game Designer manages their systems from idea to release.
• Open discussion of ideas with team members.
• A culture that values initiative and reasoned decisions.
• Work in a friendly product team atmosphere.