Design Director

We want you to #JOINTHEREBELLION!  

For 30 years we’ve been independently developing and publishing incredible video games at our multiple studios founded by Jason & Chris Kingsley, but Rebellion is more than just games. We have our own film and mo-cap studio, we create board games, publish books, and through 2000AD, publish comics and graphic novels such as the amazing Judge Dredd. 

We are seeking an experienced Design Director with exceptional leadership and people management skills to guide our talented team on an unannounced project. This role offers a fantastic opportunity to help shape the development right from the very start. 

As Design Director you will be the vision holder for your project, responsible for ensuring consistency and timely delivery of high-quality design across all aspects of the game. Your role is to empower and support the Design Team in all facets of the design and development process to help drive and define a consistent creative vision for the game universe and gameplay experience. Your focus will be on identifying and communicating ongoing design strategy, risks, priorities, and regular updates to key stakeholders.    

This role is based at our riverside headquarters in Oxford, offering a creative and relaxed atmosphere where teamwork drives our success. We can provide a relocation package, including moving assistance, temporary accommodation, and full support to ensure a smooth transition to your new environment. 

We believe in the power of face-to-face collaboration and encourage working from our Oxford headquarters. However, we understand that flexibility matters, so we’re open to discussing hybrid options based on individual needs. 

Responsibilities: 

• Act as a spokesperson for the Design Team by concisely and clearly, communicating updates and gameplay demos to Head of Design, and internal and external senior management stakeholders as required.    

• Obtain and maintain buy in from key stakeholders and the executive group throughout the project lifecycle, ensuring they are on board with the vision and scope of the game and understand the game they are getting.    
• Contribute to the delivery of the design departments and Rebellion’s short-term goals, long-term strategy, and initiatives by giving feedback, creating new ways of working, supporting recruitment, learning and development and resource planning and ensure the department can adapt to a changing market.    

• Collaborate with other discipline directors and production leadership to design, maintain, and deliver on the agreed scope and schedules for the project ensuring schedules and deadlines are clearly communicated.    

• Influence project priorities and roadmap and facilitate execution of the project on schedule, and in line with design direction.    

• Support Lead Designers in developing fun, innovative, and memorable game play experiences; ensuring all aspects of design development consistently service the overall design brief, goals, game pillars, and brand requirements.    

• Act as a project champion for Design taking a pragmatic approach to drive and support all aspects of the game Design. Including pre-production, planning, scheduling, reviews, problem solving and delivery of the final game.    

• Verify the quality of design in the game, design documents and prototype specifications, give feedback and suggest improvements where necessary to fine tune the game, whilst cooperating with constraints and direction.    

Requirements

• Expert knowledge of creating game design documents and prototype specifications.    

• Excellent knowledge of the video game development process, including working in a timely / time-bound manner, and prototyping/iterating appropriately within that restriction.    

• Expert knowledge of production pipelines.    

• Understand the audience for the game, ensuring the game design serves the target audience.  

• Exceptional Communication and relationship skills to lead the project leads by example in all aspects of the strategy & execution in line with the overall business strategy.   

• Excellent knowledge of all aspects of the games industry, competitors and market environment uses this to inform the design direction of the projects, staying current with trends within the industry and fostering this culture within the project team.   

• Able to collaborate with other discipline directors and production leadership to design, maintain, and deliver on the agreed scope and schedules for the project ensuring schedules and deadlines are clearly communicated.  

Benefits

We offer an extensive benefits package to our team including:  

• 22 days holidays + Christmas closure (typically 4 days) & Bank holidays (increasing with service at 5 years – one day each year until you reach 31 days) 

• Private Medical Insurance, healthcare cash plan, including dental and Vision 

• Life Assurance, Income Protection & Critical Illness Cover 

• Enhanced Family Leave  

• Interest Free, Tax-Free loans 

• Enhanced Pension Scheme 

• EAP a range of Mental Health and Wellbeing Support  

• Plus loads more… including a wide range of discounts, freebies, and social events!  

Life at Our Oxford HQ

Our riverside headquarters in Oxford places you a short walk away from the city centre. Renowned for its rich historical backdrop and esteemed educational institutions, Oxford offers a unique blend of tradition and modernity, with its beautiful architecture and green spaces.

Oxford also boasts excellent transport links, making it easy to navigate both the city and the wider country. The city’s train station, just a short walk from our studio, offers frequent services to London, as well as direct routes to major cities like Birmingham, Manchester, and Reading and we also offer free parking at the studio.

Our open-plan office promotes teamwork and innovation, with regular interaction with senior management and other departments, alongside access to free hot drinks, a handy tuck shop onsite and a range of local pubs, cafes and dining options nearby helping make every workday enjoyable!

Inside Rebellion

Whichever team you join at Rebellion we are proud of our open, friendly, and creative atmosphere. We love what we do, and we have fun doing it! As a big indie developer, we have complete creative freedom over our titles which allows us to work on a massive variety of projects across all the major platforms. 

Find out more about us here 

Our size, stability, and the variety of in-house expertise across multiple industries, makes Rebellion completely unique! We work in our own way, and we celebrate that as the key to our success. We foster an inclusive culture where you are encouraged to be yourself, to express your creativity and your talent. We are people focused and will support you in every way to can be the best at what you do. We recognise the importance of enjoying what you do and having a healthy work-life balance. We offer a friendly, creative, and relaxed working atmosphere, with sensibly managed projects and a wide variety of benefits and development opportunities for all our teams to ensure you are fully supported with your physical and Mental Well-being. 

We are actively recruiting for a diverse team and continue to add to our culture of growth and inclusion. Rebellion encourages innovation in all areas, and we look forward to hearing how you can help us to be better. We encourage all demographics of culture, gender, ethnicity, neurodiversity and beyond, because a representative team makes better products. 

If you are interested in working at Rebellion, but this role doesn’t sound quite like you, we’re recruiting for a range of positions across the studio and we’re always happy to receive speculative applications via our website. Visit our Careers website to view all our live vacancies: Rebellion: Careers 

#LI-Hybrid