2k Games

Lead Sound Designer

2k Games$90K — $120K *
Media
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 7+ years of professional game audio experience with at least one shipped title
  • Previous experience in leading sound design efforts
  • Expertise in sound design, mixing, editing, and audio techniques
  • Strong interpersonal skills for collaboration across teams
  • Deep understanding of the game development pipeline
  • Ability to accept and act on feedback regarding sound design
  • Proficient in creating thorough documentation, including style guides

Responsibilities

  • Act as the primary sound design contact for the project
  • Collaborate with Audio Leadership to define project sound goals
  • Oversee daily sound design execution while ensuring alignment with audio direction
  • Ensure consistency of sonic identity and standards across features
  • Translate audio direction into feature plans and style guide documentation
  • Identify audio scope, priorities, and challenges in collaboration with production
  • Coordinate with external partners for quality control and feedback

Benefits

  • Hybrid work environment with onsite and remote flexibility
  • Opportunities for mentorship and leadership development
  • Collaborative work culture with cross-discipline teams
  • Creative exploration sessions to foster innovation
  • Access to industry-leading tools and software
Full Job Description
What We Are Looking For

We are looking for a Lead Sound Designer to help guide the creative, technical, and organizational execution of sound design across one or more projects. This role reports to the Director of Sound Design and partners directly with Audio Leadership, Technical Sound Design, production, and cross-discipline teams to help define, execute, and maintain the project's sonic direction. The Lead Sound Designer acts as the primary sound design point of contact for the project, ensuring audio goals, scope, priorities, quality standards, and needs are communicated and delivered. The ideal candidate is both a strong sound designer and a project level leader. This individual can create excellent content, guide and mentor other sound designers, and translate creative audio goals into shippable results.
Project Responsibilities
  • Serve as the primary sound design point of contact for an assigned project.
  • Partner with Audio Leadership to define, refine, and execute the project's sound design goals.
  • Drive day-to-day project sound design execution while maintaining alignment with broader audio direction.
  • Maintain a cohesive sonic identity across features and systems, ensuring sound design pillars, tone, and standards are upheld.
  • Translate high-level audio direction into clear feature plans, creating sonic style guide documentation and identifying and driving sound design palette building sessions.
  • Work with production to identify and communicate audio scope, risks, dependencies, and priorities.
  • Help identify workflow and pipeline challenges and partner with appropriate teams to resolve them.
  • Coordinate with outsourcing partners and provide feedback, reviews, shotlists, style guides, and quality control.
Team Responsibilities
  • Lead, mentor, and support sound designers across assigned projects, features, or content areas.
  • Review sound design work and provide clear, constructive feedback that raises quality while supporting team growth.
  • Help maintain team morale, trust, and creative momentum through strong communication and thoughtful leadership.
  • Support onboarding, knowledge sharing, and alignment around project audio standards.
Creative Responsibilities
  • Design, edit, process, and mix high quality sound effects.
  • Collaborate with audio leadership on project sound design pillars, tone, mix direction, standards, and technical goals.
  • Take on high level of complexity in sound design work. Will be expected to handle the most forefront game feature sets of audio design such as weapons, character audio, and more with complete autonomy.
  • Create and maintain sound design documentation, including style guides, onesheets, shotlists, and palette references.
  • Lead and contribute to sound jam palette building sessions and creative exploration sessions.
  • Implement content into Wwise and UE5.
  • Record original source and lead or support recording sessions, defining the projects source recording needs.
  • Partner with Technical Sound Design on system behavior and implementation workflows.
  • Locate, diagnose, and troubleshoot issues and audio bugs.
Qualifications
  • Previous experience in leading sound design efforts.
  • 7+ years of professional game audio experience with at least one shipped title.
  • Adept ability at sound design, mixing, editing, and audio design techniques.
  • Strong soft skills and the ability to partner with audio leadership and cross-discipline teams.
  • Excellent understanding of the end-to-end game development pipeline.
  • Must be receptive to sound design feedback from peers and departmental leadership.
  • Awareness of game industry trends, tools, techniques, and player expectations.
  • Well versed at how to create clear and thorough documentation such as style guides or system designs.
  • Ability to communicate creative goals, risks, and priorities across disciplines.
Bonus Experience
  • Audio training and/or degree in audio production.
  • Experience with scripting or programming languages.
  • Post production mix experience.

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About 2k Games

2K Games is an American video game publisher based in Novato, California. The company was founded in January 2005 by Take-Two Interactive, and is best known for publishing the NBA 2K series of basketball games. Other popular franchises published by 2K Games include the Borderlands series, the BioShock series, and the Mafia series. The company has also published several licensed games based on popular movies and TV shows, such as The Walking Dead and WWE.
Learn more about 2k Games
Size
500 employees
Industry

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