Mid to Senior Game Designer

The gaming studio behind: ⚽ Football Manager

Founded in 1994, Sports Interactive became a wholly owned subsidiary of SEGA Europe in 2006. Based at the Here East technology hub in Stratford, East London, the SI team continues to expand as we bring our titles to an ever-growing audience across an increasing variety of platforms.

To support our growth, we welcome the opportunity to connect with passionate people with the drive to match our ambitions and initiative to realise your individual potential.

Location: Here East, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London, E15 2GW

Contract: Permanent and Fixed Term contract

Sports Interactive are looking for talented Senior Game Designers to join the studio and work on the Football Manager franchise, with opportunities available on both a permanent and a fixed‑term contract basis.

As a Senior Game Designer, you will be responsible for taking ownership of and driving the latest feature designs for Football Manager projects. Typical activities will include feature definition, systems, and interfaces; aiming to feed our football simulation with more quality, depth and authenticity.

You will join an ambitious and passionate team who care deeply about delivering an outstanding Football Manager experience for our players. As a Senior member of the team, you will exemplify design excellence and delivery.

The ideal candidate will be a pro‑active, self‑motivated, and creative individual, with outstanding communication skills, solid design methodology, and the ability to drive features from inception to delivery at pace within a cross‑disciplinary team.

• Own and design engaging, complex gameplay features and systems from concept to release to deliver the highest quality Football Manager experience
• Define feature goals, player experience, constraints, and success criteria in collaboration with design and creative leadership
• Collaborate closely with UI/UX and Narrative designers on feature proposals and definition
• Produce and maintain high quality documentation and champion upcoming design features with UI/UX Design, Engineering, QA and Communications
• Pro‑actively identify design risks and opportunities, proposing solutions and improvements
• Contribute to the wider game vision, proposing key ideas and game improvements to creative leadership to help shape the feature roadmap
• Assist in developing qualitative design methodologies such as test plans, prototyping, user‑testing, analytics and iterative development
• Implement content, tune data and help balance systems directly in Unity when appropriate
• Mentor and support less experienced designers through feedback, reviews and knowledge sharing

• Systems‑driven game designer who has an appreciation for complexity, depth, and simulation‑heavy topics
• Autonomous and dynamic, able to be a key driver for gameplay quality in a dispersed team
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills for effective collaboration with game designers, UX/UI designers, software engineers, artists, animators and producers
• Passionate about both football and video game development
• Well versed with Game and UX design best practices for PC
• Exceptional attention to detail and a methodical approach to design
• Good knowledge of Football Manager
• Experienced of a full development cycle releasing at least one commercial simulation game, or a project with systems‑heavy focus
• Experience with in a ‘Senior’ role including mentorship and/or people management would be beneficial
• Experience working with modern game development tools and engines such as Unity or similar
• Expert‑level with Excel and/or other data‑driven tools
• Proficient with Miro, PowerPoint and the Atlassian suit (Confluence, Jira, Jira Product Discovery)
• Computer science, game design or other relevant educational background would be beneficial

Subsidised mental health, therapy and coaching sessions are available. 😌

Contributory Pension Scheme (up to 7% of annual salary). 🏦

Free onsite evening bar in the Sports Interactive London HQ. 🍹

A well‑stocked breakfast bar with cereals, fruits, teas, and coffees. 🥣

Regular events…