Junior Live Ops Game Designer (Mobile Games)

Junior Live Ops Game Designer (Mobile)

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 smart 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. 

The game

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.  

The job

As a Junior Live Ops Game Designer, you’ll help bring live events and content to life in Party in my Dorm. This is an entry-level role designed for someone passionate about free-to-play games and excited to learn how live-service games are run day to day. 

You’ll work closely with Senior Designers, Product, Creative, Engineering, QA, and Community teams to create and execute core content for our players, while building the intuition to improve and evolve them over time. You’ll learn directly from experienced Live Ops Designers through hands-on mentorship and iteration, gradually taking on more ownership as you build your skills. This role is designed as the first step in our Live Ops design path, with successful designers growing into owning event initiatives and leading iterations independently.

What you will do:

• Bring recurring events and content (such as main events, gacha boxes, and seasonal content) to life using existing tools and templates.
• Support the iteration and improvement of live content under the guidance of senior designers.
• Test content hands-on and work with QA to ensure events are stable and ready for launch.
• Review event performance using data and dashboards, and help turn insights into actionable improvements.
• Help resolve live-ops issues as they arise to ensure events remain stable.
• Propose small improvements to existing events based on data and player feedback.
• Collaborate closely with our Product, Creative, Community, and Engineering teams to deliver high-quality live events and content that players genuinely enjoy.
• Develop your skills in event design and reward balancing, learning how pacing, incentives, and scarcity shape player behavior and influence game economies.
• Build an understanding of how events impact retention, engagement, and monetization.
• Stay closely connected to player sentiment, community discussions, and trends in the free-to-play mobile market.

Who we are looking for:

• A bachelor’s degree (preferably in Economics, Psychology, or a related field), a game design degree/diploma, or 1+ years of experience working on live games (e.g. QA, customer support, community, or live ops).
• Actively playing and interested in free-to-play mobile games.
• Strong spreadsheet skills and comfort working with formulas and structured data.
• Interest in player motivation and behavioral design.
• Comfortable working with data to form hypotheses. SQL query and/or Looker experience is an asset.
• Ability to communicate clearly and work effectively with people from different disciplines.
• Curious, growth-oriented mindset — comfortable asking questions, seeking feedback, and learning through iteration.

What’s in it for you 

At ATA you’re offered a flexible, safe, inclusive environment in which you have the autonomy to do your best work, surrounded by a strong team and with the encouragement of supportive leadership that doesn’t just care what you’re doing, but how you’re doing. You’re trusted, respected, listened to, cared for and valued. You take on thought-provoking projects and tackle fun problems alongside people who are equally invested in making meaningful contributions and seeing new ideas come to life. You know how your work aligns with the company’s goals. Your career is given the space and resources to progress. You accomplish things that make you proud. You are compensated competitively, your health and wellbeing are top priorities and you enjoy plenty of perks. At A Thinking Ape, we believe curiosity is a superpower, we make things people truly want, and we pursue gritty ambition with kindness, care, and radical alignment to growth—by thinking, acting, measuring, repeating, over-communicating, and never forgetting to play. You don’t just work for ATA, you are an integral part of ATA.

Location: Remote within British Columbia, Canada.

We’re building a distributed team across the province, working from anywhere in BC! We’ll provide the equipment you need, and support setting up your home workspace. We have a flexible work schedule, three weeks of vacation to start, flexible sick days, and a generous health benefits package.

At A Thinking Ape, we believe in fairness and pay transparency. That’s why we offer a set salary for each role, ensuring that all employees in the same role are compensated equitably regardless of negotiation skills or background. This means you’ll know exactly what to expect from the start, without the stress of back-and-forth negotiations. For candidates located in British Columbia, the salary is CAD $48,000, reflecting our commitment to competitive and fair pay.

Our commitment to inclusion

We build communities. To do this to the best of our abilities, we need a workforce that reflects the diverse player communities we serve. We believe a variety of perspectives and experiences allows us to make better decisions and understand the needs of our players. We work hard to create an environment where everyone, from any background, can do their best work and feel like they belong at ATA.  Please consider applying even if you don't meet every qualification and let us know if you require any accommodations or support during the recruitment process.

See our careers page or our short video to learn more about who we are and why you should join our team.