Lead Game Designer

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Hours:37.5 hours (Core hours 10:00am - 2:00pm Monday - Friday)

We're here to help those who teach. It's what brings us to work every day. At Twinkl, we’ve been providing educators across the world with high quality, trusted teaching and learning resources for over a decade now. They’re all written and checked by our wonderful team of experienced educators, and there are hundreds of thousands of resources to download, with new ones added daily.

We’re looking for an experienced Lead Game Designer to scale our educational games portfolio and asset production practices. This is a leadership role overseeing the quality, consistency, and scalability of both game design and 2D asset creation, with a small hands-on component.

This role will lead a team of game designers and asset creators, while helping manage production roadmaps, improving workflows, and delivering polished, accessible, and educationally meaningful game experiences. The role will also ensure creative alignment across visual, interactive, and technical elements, while also shaping best practices for asset pipelines and reusable design systems.

Game & asset leadership: Own the end-to-end design and delivery of educational games and their supporting assets, from concept and prototyping through to implementation and QA.

Design direction: Define and guide the creative and technical direction of games, ensuring visual and interaction quality align with Twinkl’s standards for accessibility, brand, and educational outcomes.

Asset strategy & scalability: Oversee asset creation workflows and pipelines, ensuring all visuals are optimised for maximum performance on the desired platform. Lead the development of reusable systems and libraries that support scalable production.

Cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with animators, illustrators, product designers, engineers, and educators to ensure cohesive, production-ready experiences that meet learning goals and creative expectations.

Creative quality & consistency: Review and provide feedback on game and asset outputs, ensuring all deliverables maintain visual polish, usability, and alignment with our design principles.

Workflow improvement: Identify, propose, and implement process enhancements that improve efficiency, collaboration, and overall team productivity.

Mentoring & leadership: Support and guide game designers and asset creators through regular feedback, project direction, and skill development. Foster a positive, collaborative team culture.

Stakeholder alignment: Communicate plans, milestones, and challenges effectively to stakeholders, leadership and partner teams, ensuring clarity on priorities, timelines, and resourcing needs.

5-7 years of experience in animation production, with at least 3 spent on managing a creative team.

Proven experience shipping games or interactive educational products on web and/or mobile.

Excellent grasp of user experience and accessibility principles in games.

Strong understanding of 2D asset pipelines, file optimisation, and lightweight game development workflows.

Proficiency with illustration and asset creation tools (e.g. Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop).

Familiarity with Unity, Godot, or similar 2D engines.

Experience managing or mentoring designers and artists.

Strong communication and organisational skills, comfortable balancing creative and operational priorities.

Familiarity with Jira, Trello, or other production management tools.

If you require a reasonable adjustment to the application/selection process to enable you to demonstrate your ability to perform the job requirements please include this at the foot of your covering letter. This will help us to understand any modifications we may need to make to support you throughout our selection process.

In return for everything you can bring, we can offer you an exciting role in a fast-growing and dynamic business, with plenty of career opportunities.

A friendly, welcoming and supportive culture. We believe work should be fun and always put people before the process

Diversity, inclusion and belonging - our Employee Network Program includes working groups for LGBTQ+, People of Colour, Disabilities (visible and invisible), Women in Tech and Working Parents.

• From day 1 - Westfield Health
• 33 annual leave days per year (pro-rata) inclusive bank holidays, a "Me" day each year, a charity day each year, flexible working policy with opportunities to work from home and Twinkl subscriptions.
• Quarterly company awards programme
• Seasonal events
• Cervical and Prostate screening
• Company sick pay after 3 months of service
• After probation - cycle-to-work scheme
• Long-term service reward - Life insurance, enhanced pension contribution, enhanced maternity pay, enhanced adoption pay and enhanced paternity pay, long service award, long service annual leave