Lead Level Designer

Job Description

The Lead Level Designer is responsible for the design, consistency, and execution of the gameplay experiences created by the World team. 

Reporting to the World Lead, they organize, support, and guide the Level Design team to transform the gameplay, artistic, and technical vision into clear, coherent game spaces that deliver a compelling experience. 

They work in close partnership with the Lead Level Art and the Lead Tech Level Design to ensure perfect alignment between gameplay intentions, visual composition, technical implementation, and the quality and playability of the environments. 

She or He collaborates daily with the Technical Department to integrate technical constraints, production tools, and methods that ensure efficient, robust, and sustainable production. 

Beyond his/her own team, She/he actively contributes to World-level decisions and advocates for Level Design considerations with other disciplines on the project. 

Responsibilities 

Level Design Team management 

•    Organize the work of the Level Design team and set production priorities.  

•    Support, mentor, and develop the skills of Level Designers.  

•    Provide regular, clear, and constructive feedback.  

•    Foster a team culture based on autonomy, accountability, and knowledge sharing.  

•    Identify production risks and quickly propose appropriate solutions.  

•    Ensure that deadlines, expected quality standards, and production methods are met. 

Collaboration within the World Team 

•    Translate the vision of the Game Director and World Director into concrete level design objectives for the World team.  

•    Build a day-to-day working relationship with the World Lead to align quality, priorities, and production capacity.  

•    Work closely with the Lead Level Art to design environments where gameplay, clarity, composition, and art direction reinforce one another.  

•    Collaborate with Technical Direction to anticipate technical constraints, optimize workflows, and ensure seamless integration of content while maintaining performance targets.  

•    Work with other Leads to define quality standards, production guidelines, and best practices for the World team.  

•    Ensure the playability and consistency of game spaces, their structure, and their presentation at all scales. 

Collaboration with the rest of the project 

•    Communicate Level Design considerations to Game Direction, Technical Direction, Art Direction, and Production.  

•    Collaborate with the Gameplay, Programming, Tech Art, and QA teams, as well as other disciplines, to ensure consistent integration of content.  

•    Participate in making trade-offs between gameplay intentions, technical constraints, quality, and scheduling.  

•    Foster smooth communication among the various teams involved in World production. 

Level Design excellence 

•    Define level design standards for the environments created by your team, in line with the requirements set by Game Direction.  

•    Design spaces that are easy to navigate, feature controlled progression, and provide a consistent, high-quality experience.  

•    Ensure the quality of paths, points of interest, gameplay sequences, transitions, and spatial cues.  

•    Pay close attention to pacing, movement flows, spatial continuity, and player perception.  

•    Design experiences that encourage discovery, decision-making, a sense of ownership of the environment, and varied gameplay situations.  

•    Rapidly produce prototypes and iterations to validate gameplay intentions and continuously improve environments.  

•    Identify opportunities to improve the World throughout production.  

•    Stay abreast of industry methods, tools, and practices to continuously improve the team’s workflows. 

Qualifications

Leadership 

•    Proven experience managing a Level Design team in AAA production.  

•    Ability to unite a team around common goals.  

•    Ability to make decisions, mediate, and prioritize effectively.  

•    Excellent communication, persuasion, and collaboration skills. 

Level Design expertise 

•    Solid experience designing environments and gameplay experiences for video games.  

•    Excellent understanding of spatial organization, movement flows, gameplay elements, progression, pacing, and gameplay staging.  

•    Ability to design environments that promote clear interpretation, meaningful choices, and a seamless experience.  

•    Good understanding of environmental storytelling and its integration into gameplay.  

•    Keen sensitivity to the perception of spaces, their continuity, and their consistency across different scales.  

•    Ability to maintain a high level of quality within a complex production environment. 

Collaboration 

•    Ability to work daily with artistic, technical, and production teams.  

•    Understanding of gameplay, performance, and pipeline constraints.  

•    Ability to translate a creative vision into concrete production goals.  

•    Strong knowledge of the disciplines involved in world-building (architecture, geography, geology, urban planning, landscape design, or equivalent fields). 

Personal Qualities 

The candidate stands out for: 

•    Strong creativity applied to production goals.  

•    A high degree of rigor in organizing and supervising his team.  

•    The ability to adapt, allowing him to adjust methods when the situation requires it.  

•    Clear, constructive, and problem-solving-oriented communication. 

•    Fluency in English 

Additional Information

Founded in 1996, Ubisoft Annecy has developed many sagas, especially on Splinter Cell, Assassin’s Creed®, while focusing on multiplayer online and social aspects, and also on concrete game mandates such as Tom Clancy’s: The Division 2® and Ghost Recon Wildlands. We are now proud to have developed our own IP, Steep and more recently Riders Republic!

On top of our AAA production, we are working on innovation with a technological expertise hub around the Snowdrop engine pipeline, and Technology Group in collaboration with Ubisoft Montreal.

Located in one of the most dynamic regions of France, our Ubisoft studio is settled between lake and mountains, in the middle of Annecy, also known as the Venice of the Alps, 30 minutes away from Geneva International Airport. Having a studio with perpetual growth, we are focusing on our team members' commitment and team work. Our ambition relies on innovation and excellence with an ultimate purpose: our players' satisfaction !