Game Design Manager

SportSpired Games is an international game studio developing next-generation sports simulators. Our team includes professionals with experience at Wargaming, MY.GAMES, Ubisoft, 343 Industries, Starbreeze, Sperasoft, and EA Sports. We are currently working on a large-scale AAA title planned for release in 2028–2029.

About this Position

SportSpired Games is looking for a Game Design Manager to lead and develop our Game Design team, driving execution, improving workflows, and ensuring high-quality design delivery for our next-generation AAA sports simulator.

In this role, you will work closely with the Creative Director, Design Leads, and Production to translate creative vision into actionable plans, align teams around priorities, and support designers in delivering complex gameplay features. You will combine people management, production oversight, and design expertise to build an effective and scalable Game Design organization.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop the Game Design team, including hiring, performance reviews, regular feedback, mentoring, and career development

• Support Design Leads in team management, workload planning, and developing their designers

• Translate creative strategy and high-level priorities into design roadmaps, team objectives, and measurable deliverables

• Allocate work across Design Leads and Designers, balancing priorities, capacity, timelines, and dependencies

• Track progress, identify risks and bottlenecks, and ensure design deliverables meet production milestones

• Strengthen feature ownership within the Design team, improving accountability and end-to-end delivery

• Oversee feature pre-production, design documentation standards, and review processes

• Partner with the Creative Director and Design Leads to define quality standards, acceptance criteria, and Definition of Done

• Drive consistent design workflows, tools, and best practices across teams

• Coordinate with Production, Engineering, Animation, Art, QA, and UX to resolve dependencies, align design decisions, and ensure execution

• Organize competitor research and turn findings approved by the Creative Director into actionable hypotheses and experiments

• Promote knowledge sharing, continuous improvement, and professional growth across the Design team

Requirements

• 3+ years of experience managing Game Designers and coordinating design teams on complex PC or Console game projects

• Proven ability to translate strategic objectives into actionable plans and drive them through execution

• Strong understanding of game development pipelines, production workflows, and the full feature development lifecycle

• Solid Game Design expertise, with the ability to review design decisions, systems, and documentation

• Experience managing priorities, scope, schedules, dependencies, and production risks

• Strong people management skills, including mentoring, performance management, and delivering constructive feedback

• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to align teams and resolve conflicting design priorities

• Strong organizational skills and a proactive approach to problem-solving