Principal Technical Designer

Scopely is looking for a top-performing Principal Technical Designer to join our design organization remotely within the US or hybrid in our Culver City hub.

At Scopely, we care deeply about what we do and want to inspire play every day - whether in our work environments alongside our talented colleagues or through our deep connections with our communities of players. We are a global team of game lovers who are developing, publishing and innovating the mobile games industry, connecting millions of people around the world daily.

As Principal Technical Designer, you will sit between game designers and the full stack that carries their content from authoring to the player: Tools (the designer interface), Engine (how the game consumes data), and Infrastructure (how data is stored and delivered), and make sure designers are set up to build content quickly, safely, and at scale. You will turn how designers actually work into clear requirements for Tools, and build the templates, data structures, validation, and standards that let great ideas become shipped content without waiting on an engineer. Your hands-on work and expertise will unlock the team of designers to create more compelling content for our players, deliver it much more quickly, and eliminate points of friction throughout the process.

What you will do:

• Own the content workflow experience for game designers, from first idea through live content, and raise it to a standard where authoring is fast, safe, and a pleasure.
• Bridge game designers and the full data stack: turn designer pain points into clear, prioritized requirements for Tools, Engine, and Infrastructure, and translate their constraints back into practical guidance.
• Measure how designers work today (iteration time, hand-offs, engineer-assist requests, content defects) and remove the biggest sources of friction.
• Partner with Tools, Engine, and Infrastructure to specify authoring tools, data schemas, validation, and delivery, and act as the first and most demanding user during prototyping and rollout.
• Build the technical foundations designers rely on: reusable templates, data architectures, and scripts that let designers create and tune content without code changes.
• Own content architecture across projects: define how content is structured, authored, versioned, and delivered so teams share one coherent model instead of rebuilding per title.
• Define and enforce content authoring standards for naming, data structure, documentation, and review, with validation that catches errors at authoring time rather than in QA or live.
• Set the workflow and tooling strategy for the design organization: decide which workflows deserve investment and shape the roadmap with Tools, Engine, and Infrastructure leadership.
• Serve as craft lead for technical design: set the discipline's standards and hiring bar, mentor designers and technical designers, and lead the team through transitions to new tooling.
• Form small cross-discipline embedded workflow teams (design, tools, engineering) aimed at the highest-friction workflows, and partner with Art, UX, QA, and Live Ops so pipelines hold from authoring through release.
• Envision content workflows that sustain a large live-operated game, with scalable quality, velocity, and cost.

What you will need:

• 8+ years in technical design, systems design, or tools-facing design roles on shipped games
• Demonstrated experience partnering with tools, engine, and backend teams to define authoring tools, content pipelines, or data-driven workflows end to end
• A track record of measurably improving designer iteration time or content throughput, including leading cross-discipline workflow efforts at scale (embedded teams, tooling migrations, or content architecture)
• Strong scripting and data skills (for example Python, C#, Lua, visual scripting, spreadsheets, JSON, SQL) and the judgment to know when to build, configure, or ask Engineering
• Deep understanding of data-driven design: config tables, schemas, templates, and validation, and how data is consumed by the engine and stored and delivered from the backend
• Experience on live-operated or content-heavy games where content velocity and quality both matter
• Strong communication and the ability to set standards and priorities across multiple teams without direct authority

Bonus Points:

• Experience building or owning internal authoring tools, or designing workflows for creator or user-generated-content tools
• Experience working directly in Unity, including custom editors and data-driven asset workflows
• 3+ years working in Free to Play
• Experience on cross-platform products, and console / PC games

For candidates in CA, CO, NJ, NY, and WA, the annual salary range is provided below. In addition to base pay, employees may be eligible for equity, bonuses, and a comprehensive benefits package, including healthcare benefits, retirement benefits, pet insurance, paid holidays, paid Scopely free days, and unlimited paid time off. Base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.

CA, CO, NJ, NY, and WA Annual Salary Range

$144,200—$215,000 USD

About Scopely

Scopely is a leading video game and global interactive entertainment company, home to many of the world’s most beloved and enduring experiences, including two of the most successful mobile games of all-time “MONOPOLY GO!” and “Pokémon GO,” along with “Stumble Guys,” “Star Trek™ Fleet Command,” “MARVEL Strike Force,” “WWE Champions,” the Scrabble® franchise, “Yahtzee® With Buddies,” and many others. Across mobile, web, PC, and console, Scopely creates, develops, publishes, and live-operates one of the most diversified and award-winning portfolios in the games industry - bringing hundreds of millions of players together through a shared love of play.

Founded in 2011, Scopely is powered by its exceptional team - including thousands of world-class gamemakers around the globe, a distinctive tenet-driven culture, and its proprietary technology platform, Playgami. Together, these strengths have fueled Scopely’s position as the #1 mobile games company in the U.S. and #2 globally, generating more than $10 billion in lifetime revenue. Whether building global sensations like “MONOPOLY GO!” from the ground up, or expanding through strategic acquisitions, including the FoxNext, GSN, and Scopely Explore games businesses - Scopely consistently delivers experiences players love today and return to for years to come.

Recognized multiple times as one of the "100 Most Influential Companies in the World" by TIME magazine and one of Fast Company's "World's Most Innovative Companies" and “Best Workplaces for Innovators,” Scopely believes that video games can be a force for good - creating meaningful connections, vibrant communities, and making life better through play.

Scopely has global operations and partners across four continents in more than a dozen countries worldwide. For more information, visit: https://www.scopely.com/. 

Notice to Candidates: Scopely will never request payment or financial information during the application or hiring process. Please apply only through our official website and verify that all Talent Partner communications come from an email address ending in @scopely.com.

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Employment at Scopely is based solely on a person's merit and qualifications. Scopely does not discriminate against any employee or applicant because of race, creed, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, national origin, disability, age, genetic information, veteran status, marital status, pregnancy or related condition (including breastfeeding), or any other basis protected by law. We also consider qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.