Senior Live Ops Game Designer (UK based candidates only)

Please note: This role is open to UK based candidates only.

Role Overview

Part of a dynamic design team, a Senior Live Ops Game Designer at Coatsink is responsible for designing and maintaining the ongoing direction of our Free to Play title, ensuring that the game’s content is focused around optimizing (for mobile) live events, features, and monetization strategies to drive player engagement, time spent and revenue growth. You will work closely with product managers, analysts, UX designers, and developers to create compelling content and systems that keep our players coming back for more.

The Senior Live Ops Game Designer will communicate primarily with the Design Team, the Client, the game’s Product Owner and with seniors from other disciplines, to ensure the whole team understands the project’s design, as well as progress. As a new specialism here at Coatsink, we are looking for someone with a wealth of Free to Play and mobile design experience to coach and mentor more junior and/or less experienced members of the design team in this method of working and to promote the working culture and values of Coatsink in all their interactions.

Responsibilities & Tasks

• Design features and content to execute engaging LiveOps events, in-game promotions and challenges to maximize retention.
• Develop and fine-tune monetization strategies, including in-app purchases, progression systems, reward structures, and economy balancing.
• Collaborate with data analysts to track KPIs, A/B test features, and iterate based on performance insights.
• Work closely with other designers and developers to ensure smooth implementation of LiveOps features and in-game content.
• Stay updated on industry trends, competitor analysis, and best practices in F2P monetization and engagement strategies.
• Optimize and expand game mechanics to enhance user experience and long-term player investment.
• Contribute to the overall game design roadmap and assist in designing new features that integrate well with LiveOps strategies.
• Assist the Lead Designer by taking ownership of features, and championing the project’s design direction, both internally and externally with clients.
• When required, manage a team of designers on a project, prioritising tasks and streamlining development processes.
• Support and coach less experienced members of the design team.
• When required, work, plan and communicate with team leads and the Design Manager to ensure the development team have the resources needed to build the game.
• Assist the Lead Designer in reviewing all design work to ensure it meets the project’s design.
• Ensure all design documentation is kept organised and up to date.
• Communicate with external collaborators on a project to keep them up to date on the project’s design.
• Create and maintain design documentation, including feature specification and implementation guidelines.
• Help to organise and encouraging the rest of the team to participate in regular team ‘show and tell’ meetings, to share information, learn and collaborate on problem solving.
• Undertake any other reasonable assigned duty, that is line with postholders skills, knowledge and ability

Person Specification

Qualifications

• Relevant university degree or a strong up to date project portfolio (preferred but not required).
• May have additional postgraduate, management or continuing professional development.

Experience

• 5+ years of experience as a Game Designer in a LiveOps-focused role for a F2P mobile game.
• Strong understanding of F2P economy design, monetization strategies, and player retention mechanics.
• Experience designing and managing LiveOps events, promotions, and engagement loops.
• Proficiency in analysing KPIs, interpreting data, and iterating on designs based on performance.
• Familiarity with A/B testing, segmentation, and CRM tools to optimize engagement strategies.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills to work effectively in a cross-functional team.
• Creative problem solver with a player-first mindset and a deep understanding of game design principles.
• Experience using Atlassian software (Jira, Confluence etc)
• Experience leading a team on a released title and supporting and coaching less experienced team members.
• Significant experience working within a variety of project management methodologies, such as SCRUM.
• Experience of developing for mobile, significant experience would be ideal

Skills

• Efficient in design solutions, taking into account scope and proposing simple solutions to turn around improvements as soon as possible.
• Competent art / graphic design skills to help elevate design documentation and get ideas across.
• The ability to lead, impart information, encourage and support junior or less experienced members of the team.
• Deep understanding of free to play genre and mobile game design.
• Thorough understanding of how to target specific audiences.
• Highly developed communication skills.
• Competent IT skills.

Aptitude

• Able to take ownership over decisions and work closely with data analysts to back up these decisions to the client and other key stakeholders.
• Highly proficient and effective at working in both small and large teams.
• Highly skilled at adapting quickly to changes and new problems.
• Highly adept at taking and seeking out constructive criticism and using it to improve designs and workflows.
• Self-motivated, confident in your own expertise and able to work with independence.
• Proactive in your approach to daily workload, actively looking for problems to solve.
• Comfortable and confident working very closely with clients and external design teams.
• Strong passion for playing video games across a wide variety of genres and advanced analysis of what makes them good/bad.
• Willing to embrace, promote and live the Coatsink values.