Senior Level Designer

Astrid is a gaming studio that brings together accomplished worldbuilders and game developers to create multiplayer creative experiences. Our first title is a cooperative open-world life simulation set in a natural world inspired by the wonder of Studio Ghibli and the playfulness of Nintendo. This is a living world shared by a small group of players that are given creative tools and freedom to evolve the world through the connections they form and the choices they pursue.

Our team spans the US, the UK, and beyond. We are taking a fully remote approach, but have regular in-person meetups to synchronize, huddle and build our culture.

Astrid is seeking an experienced Senior Level Designer to join us as a contractor with an option to join our team in a full time position later. In this role, you will work with our Design and Art teams to craft memorable spaces, encounters, and game moments that bring our world to life.

The Role

We are looking for a Senior Level Designer who can collaborate with our creative, design, and art teams to turn our open world demo into a fully playable map driven by exploration and environmental storytelling.

You will be responsible for shaping how players move through a natural world, designing spaces that reveal narrative through layout, pacing, and player discovery rather than exposition. This role requires someone who can think beyond set pieces and build environments that feel systemic, immersive, and worth exploring.

The game launches with a single large biome. Rather than building a vast map, our focus is on density, readability, and creating a place players come to know intimately over time. Within that biome, we aim to craft a rich variety of distinct locations that each feel unique in mood, composition, and identity, avoiding repetition.

You'll apply the compositional principles that make Breath of the Wild feel masterfully structured, using terrain, landmarks, and sightlines to shape exploration across a richly detailed biome roughly the size and density of one of its zones.

You'll be designing two types of playspace:

• Wild areas are playgrounds - spaces where players explore, gather, and encounter wildlife, and where the terrain itself becomes part of the play — full of opportunities for emergent physical play and satisfying traversal
• Settled areas are player-shaped - outposts and settlements that players build up, expand, and personalise over time, and which need to evolve spatially as they grow.

You will need to consider the following critical elements of the game:

• The gameplay is Nintendo-like. Kinetic, joyful and hands-on; players run, jump, climb, throw, and bounce through the world. This isn't a "walk and interact" game, and the level design needs to reflect that at every turn.
• The world is dynamic. Systems will change the landscape over time — areas will gradually come alive and evolve as players invest in them. Every space you design needs to support transformation without breaking the underlying spatial logic.
• The world is shared. A small group of players inhabits this world together. Moments of discovery need to land whether solo or with friends, terrain needs to be fun to traverse as a group, and layouts should give players reasons to split up and regroup.

Requirements

Must Have – First and foremost, you are an exceptional level designer

• Demonstrated ability to own and drive the spatial composition of an open world exploration space
• A portfolio demonstrating strong open-world spatial composition — including terrain, landmarks, traversal routes, and player sightlines
• Experience shaping terrain using landscape tools or heightmap workflows, as well as designing and composing the spaces
• Comfortable rapidly greyboxing terrain and spaces to explore ideas before systems, art, or content are final
• 5+ years as a level designer, or at least one shipped open-world title
• Unreal Engine 5 experience (or similar transferable game engine skills)
• Comfortable wearing several hats as part of a small team
• Comfortable working across disciplines and in a fully remote team
• Based in the UK or a UTC±2 adjacent time zone

Nice to Have – Any additional talents are very welcome

• 5+ years Unreal Engine 5 experience
• Experience working on creative sandbox or systemic games where players shape environments and return to the same spaces repeatedly, requiring levels that support long-term engagement and evolving player activity
• Design experience across any of the following:
• Environmental storytelling
• Spaces that evolve over time
• Data-driven world population
• Procedural generation systems
• Multiplayer or co-op games
• Life-simulation or cosy games
• Exposure to pre-production and pipeline-building

Benefits

• Great compensation package and equity
• Private health insurance
• Pension
• Unlimited vacation days. We trust our team!
• Flexible remote work hours as long as team members deliver results
• We are committed to continuing to expand our benefits and perks to support our team.