Lead Designer – RuneScape: Dragonwilds

Overview

As Lead Designer for RuneScape: Dragonwilds, you guide co-development partners to deliver cohesive, player-focused experiences that meet the project’s creative vision and quality standards. You bridge internal direction with external execution, mentor teams, and drive design alignment across multiple partners. The role emphasizes collaboration, clear feedback, and proactive risk management to maintain a consistent player experience at scale. This is a chance to shape an open-world survival crafting game built in Unreal Engine 5 and influence its co-dev ecosystem.

Pay / Benefits

• Private Healthcare, including Dental Plan
• Minimum 6% Pension contributions
• Employee Assistance Programme & onsite Counselling
• Life Insurance
• Discretionary annual performance bonus
• Enhanced family leave policies from day 1

Responsibilities

• Drive the design vision across external development and outsourcing partners
• Act as primary design contact for co-development teams with clear direction and ongoing support
• Translate high-level vision into actionable guidance for partners
• Review features and content, providing constructive feedback to ensure quality and consistency
• Ensure externally developed work aligns with design pillars, tech constraints, and player goals
• Collaborate with Creative Leadership and Production to maintain cross-area consistency
• Identify risks and blockers early and work with partners to resolve
• Provide hands-on design support to unblock teams via implementation guidance or prototyping
• Facilitate communication between internal stakeholders and external partners
• Help establish efficient review processes, workflows, and best practices across co-dev teams
• Participate in planning, milestone reviews, and feature evaluations
• Champion player-focused design through playtesting and iterative improvement
• Support onboarding of new development partners and clarify project vision and standards
• Build trusted relationships with external teams to foster accountability and collaboration

Key requirements

• Proven experience leading design on shipped PC or console titles
• Experience with co-development studios, outsourcing partners, or distributed teams
• Strong understanding of gameplay systems, progression, and player experience
• Excellent communication, presentation, and stakeholder management skills
• Ability to influence teams without direct line management
• Experience reviewing work across multiple design disciplines with actionable feedback
• Strong problem-solving to identify risks and unblock development
• Experience creating and maintaining design documentation
• Ability to balance creative vision with production realities and technical constraints
• Strong proficiency with Unreal Engine 5 and hands-on gameplay implementation
• Knowledge of UE5 systems including Blueprints, Data Assets, Gameplay Framework, and content authoring workflows
• Experience debugging gameplay issues with engineering teams
• Understanding of feature development pipelines, iteration, and content integration
• Experience working with multidisciplinary teams (Engineering, Art, Audio, Narrative, QA, Production)
• Deep understanding of player psychology, usability, and gameplay pacing

• excellent communication
• mentorship and leadership
• stakeholder management
• Unreal Engine 5
• Blueprints
• Gameplay Framework

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