Ops Design Manager; Mobile Games

The team

A Thinking Ape is a remote mobile game studio focused on building social strategy games that people play for decades. This role sits on the Game Design team within our world-class Live-Ops organization, which leads the industry in supporting and growing long running live games. Our designers are hands-on across the full lifecycle of live features and events from ideation and release to iteration and long term improvements.

The team isn’t afraid to try new things, take risks, and learn quickly. Decisions are metrics-driven and player-informed, balancing data with deep community insight to deliver meaningful, lasting experiences for our player community.

Party in my Dorm is a highly successful free-to-play game with a community of over 100,000 dedicated players who love our game. The game has the population of a small city, with a player-driven trade economy, a passionate community and years of layered content. While its themes focus on fashion, relationships, storytelling, and home decor, it’s also one of the most competitive PVP experiences in mobile, surprising many with its depth and intensity of its gameplay.

Kingdoms at War is a classic free-to-play war game with a passionate, highly engaged community, and a constant cadence of live events. Also loaded with years of deep content this game fuels deep strategic gameplay and rich social dynamics driving players to fight for dominance of their server. The game has very flexible designer building blocks, meaning that there are endless possibilities for player experiences you can create with the design tools alone.

As the Live Ops Design Manager, you’ll guide the planning and execution of live events and content for both Party in my Dorm and Kingdoms orting to the Design Lead, you’ll guide a small team of designers to create well-balanced, engaging experiences that keep our communities active and invested while also owning some of the highest‑impact design work yourself. This is a highly collaborative role;

you’ll partner closely with the team’s Design Lead, other designers, and work cross functionally with Product, Engineering, Creative and Community teams to identify new opportunities, improve live content structures, and ensure events launch smoothly and perform well. This blends people leadership, hands‑on game design, and operational ownership. It’s ideal for someone who enjoys being part of the strategy and direction, while still being deeply involved in the design details and execution that make live games thrive.

• Lead the design planning and execution of the live events and content calendar across two of our longest running games
• Collaborate closely with our Product, Creative, Community, and Engineering teams to deliver high quality live events, ensuring they run smoothly
• Design and iterate on new types of events and content, and solve interesting design challenges
• Analyze event performance using data and player feedback, and translate insights into clear design improvements
• Directly manage a small number of designers, coaching them on core design skills and live ops best practices
• Coordinate and help resolve live-ops design issues ensuring events remain stable
• Help improve team workflows, documentation, and design tools used by the team to support scalability and long term efficiency
• Stay closely connected to player sentiment, community discussions, and trends in the free-to-play mobile market

• 5+ years of experience related to event and/or content design in free-to-play mobile games (strategy, march battle, life simulation, fashion, home decor, cooking or farming games)
• Strong understanding of the game mechanics, monetization, and live ops cycles in this genre
• Actively playing and interested in free to play mobile games
• Experience managing event or content schedules and coordinating with multiple disciplines
• Previous experience mentoring or managing junior designers
• Experience owning live launches and responding to real-time issues when they arise
• Strong spreadsheet skills, strong understanding of relevant free-to-play KPIs, and experience working with data and dashboards to evaluate…