Senior Combat Designer (AI archetype) Novato, California, United States

As a Senior Combat Designer at Cloud Chamber, you will collaborate with an innovative team of designers, artists, and engineers to create industry-leading AI characters and combat gameplay. You will be responsible for expanding and building on the ideas of player expression and emergent design experiences. Utilizing your deep knowledge of Unreal Engine, you will develop interactive AI characters to support the overall creative vision for our project, ensuring that our ambitious design goals are achieved and ultimately bring the richly imagined world of BioShock to life. What You’ll Do: Work with the Leads, Design Director, and the design team to pitch and develop interactive AI characters and execute the vision for the game. Act as the primary owner of AI and combat implementation in cross-disciplinary pods. Develop working prototypes of AI and combat scenarios. Communicate progress, workflows, and availability of AI and combat standards to content developers. Maintain and tune assigned combat AI behavior and parameters through to project completion. Create detailed and easy-to-follow design documentation. Collaborate across development sites in Novato and Montreal on a day-to-day basis. Expand and build on the ideas of player expression and emergent design experiences. Use your creativity to execute on design goals and solve design challenges that push our games forward. Participate in brainstorm sessions, refine, and execute on ideas within a schedule. Collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams to execute on design implementation and problem solving. Skills & Experiences: Shipped at least one AAA title as a designer responsible for AI combatants. 5+ years professional experience in video game design. Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Experience working with a variety of established game toolsets. Proven ability to collaborate effectively within cross-disciplinary groups and across multi-site team settings. Deep understanding of game mechanics, combat systems, and AI NPC design. Fluent with game development tools, and experience with pipelines, standards and workflows. Current knowledge of gaming industry development landscape, technology and tools. Understanding of how AI, tactical space, and player verbs combine to create magic in both scripted and unscripted settings. In-depth knowledge of industry standard AI, progression systems, and player mechanics features. Who You Are: A strong empathetic team member, able to take ownership over your tasks and mentor more junior designers. A reliable, positive force multiplier, actively seeking opportunities to integrate work across disciplines and contribute to a healthy, supportive team environment. A solid communicator with excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex ideas clearly, package information for diverse audiences, and deliver difficult feedback with empathy and professionalism. A persistent and self-motivated person with a proactive mindset. Able to maintain effectiveness and quality under pressure, ambiguity, and fast-changing priorities. An active listener able to build and maintain trust-based relationships across all levels of the organization, understand differing perspectives, and navigate organizational complexity with tact and emotional intelligence. Highly open to feedback and direction, possessing a desire to learn new skills, and capable of producing quick, quality revisions based on new insights or constraints. A strong owner of your tasks, who strives to drive their work forward autonomously while maintaining a critical eye for detail and organization, ensuring high standards of quality. Dedicated to upholding Cloud Chamber’s core values, contributing to a positive and respectful company culture while striving for excellence in all endeavors. Salary and benefits: The pay range for this position in California at the start of employment is expected to be between $100,200 and $148,320 per year. Compensation may also include 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 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 (15 to 25 days) or eligibility to participate in a 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. As an equal opportunity employer, we are committed to ensuring that qualified individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, perform their essential job functions, and receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us if you need reasonable accommodation. #J-18808-Ljbffr 2K Games, Inc.