Technical Game Designer

Cat Daddy

• $88K — $131K *
Consumer Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years in game design, focusing on free-to-play mobile games.
  • Bachelor's degree in a related field or relevant work experience.
  • Extensive hands-on experience with agentic tooling and workflows.
  • Strong expertise in Unity for producing mobile games.
  • Deep understanding of mobile game economies and live infrastructure.
  • Comprehensive grasp of end-to-end game development pipelines.
  • Top-notch communication skills for effective collaboration and documentation.

Responsibilities

  • Design engaging gameplay experiences including events and new game modes.
  • Own features from initial concept through live tuning and deployment.
  • Write clear, actionable specs covering intent and edge cases.
  • Manage workflows across design processes, from research to content authoring.
  • Prototype gameplay concepts in Unity for real-time validation.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to balance gameplay elements.

Benefits

  • Medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurance coverage.
  • 14 paid holidays and paid vacation time (15 to 25 days).
  • Up to 10 paid sick days per year.
  • Paid parental and compassionate leave.
  • Comprehensive wellbeing programs and family planning support.
  • Commuter benefits and fitness-related expense reimbursements.
Full Job Description
What We Need:

Cat Daddy is seeking a Technical Designer to join our team of artists, engineers, and product managers to design, prototype, and ship features for free-to-play mobile games. This role sits between design and engineering. You will carry a feature from the first pitch through to the live build: writing the spec, standing up the prototype in Unity, wiring it into the services that run our games, and tuning it once players are inside it. The ideal candidate has shipped multiple F2P mobile games in a design or technical design role.

This is an in-office position, located in Kirkland, WA. Must be able to work onsite 4 days a week.

What You Will Do:
  • Design new gameplay experiences including limited-time events, complete game modes, and mini-games that add variety and excitement to the core game loop.
  • Own features end to end, from the pitch through a working prototype, the shipped build, and the live tuning pass that follows.
  • Write specs that hold up as executable instructions: clear intent, explicit constraints, acceptance criteria, edge cases, and the failure states that separate a good build from a plausible one.
  • Build, orchestrate, and refine agentic workflows across the design pipeline, covering research, competitive teardowns, spec drafting, prototype scaffolding, balance sweeps, content authoring, and telemetry analysis.
  • Prototype directly in Unity so a concept can be played, and validated against live service systems.
  • Collaborate with cross-functional teams to balance fun, difficulty, and monetization across your designs.

Who We Think Will Be A Great Fit:
  • 5+ years of game design experience, with a focus on free-to-play mobile games, plus a Bachelor's degree in a related field and/or comparable, relevant work experience.
  • Deep, hands-on practice with agentic tooling and workflows, used daily rather than demoed occasionally.
  • Fluency in the craft that makes those workflows work: context and prompt construction, task decomposition, tool and permission design, checkpointing, evaluation harnesses, and honest measurement of quality over time.
  • Production experience in Unity building mobile games.
  • Expert-level understanding of the mobile game market from a game design perspective, including game economies, data analysis, back-end environments, and live infrastructure.
  • Practical understanding of game development pipelines end to end.
  • World-class communication skills, with proven ability to produce effective design documentation, and a great teammate who can collaborate with engineers and artists on game development.

The pay range for this position in Kirkland, WA at the start of employment is expected to be between $88,700 and $131,300 per year. However, base pay offered is based on market location, and may vary further depending on individualized factors for job candidates, such as job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and other objective business considerations.

Subject to those same considerations, the total compensation package for this position may also include other elements, including a bonus and/or equity awards and eligibility to participate in our 401(K) plan and Employee Stock Purchase Program.

Regular, full-time employees are also eligible for a range of benefits at the Company, including: medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurance coverage; 14 paid holidays per calendar year; paid vacation time per calendar year (ranging from 15 to 25 days) or eligibility to participate in the Company's discretionary time off program; up to 10 paid sick days per calendar year; paid parental and compassionate leave; wellbeing programs for mental health and other wellness support; family planning support through Maven; commuter benefits; and reimbursements for fitness-related expenses.

If hired, employee will be in an "at-will position" and the company reserves the right to modify base salary (as well as any other discretionary payment or compensation or benefit program) at any time, including for reasons related to individual performance, company or individual department/team performance, and market factors.

At Cat Daddy, we believe diversity of experience is fundamental to crafting accessible and fun gaming experiences for all of our players. We encourage everyone to consider being a part of our team.

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