Design Director - RS

Office location: Cambridgeshire, UK – This position offers flexible working options, including predominantly remote work. However, applicants should be based (or be willing to relocate) within a comfortable commuting distance of our office to attend onsite as required.

Are you an experienced MMO design leader who knows what it takes to build a world players will want to call home for thousands of hours?

As Design Director on our newly announced MMORPG, RS4 you'll work closely with our Creative Director to turn our vision into a coherent, scalable, and sustainable MMO design for an ambitious new project in the Rune Scape universe. Bringing deep, hands-on experience of building and shipping MMOs, you'll own the game's overall design architecture across progression, economy, content, social systems, endgame, and live operations, making sure every system works together as a compelling long-term player experience.

This is an exciting senior leadership opportunity to lead and grow our Design team, partnering closely with the Creative Director, Design Leads, Production, and Engineering to create a game that can be built and operated at scale, and that honours what makes Rune Scape so special to millions of players.

What you'll be doing:

• Translate the Creative Director's vision and pillars into a coherent, scalable MMO experience.
• Own the MMO design architecture, defining how progression, combat, economy, content, social systems, endgame, and retention work together.
• Set the design strategy and standards, establishing design principles, frameworks, and quality bars across the project.
• Lead the Design team, guiding and mentoring Design Leads and senior designers while establishing clear ownership and decision-making.
• Design for longevity, ensuring systems and content can sustain years of player progression, engagement, and live development.
• Partner closely with Creative, Production, Engineering, UX, Analytics, and other teams to make sure designs are achievable at scale.
• Use play testing, telemetry, and player feedback to identify problems, iterate, and evolve the experience.
• Anticipate and proactively address MMO-specific risks, including economy health, progression balance, content consumption, exploits, and technical constraints.

What we're looking for:

• A proven track-record of successful game design experience, with substantial experience on MMOs or persistent online worlds.
• Senior design leadership experience (Design Director, Lead Designer, Principal Designer, Game Director, or equivalent) on at least one shipped MMO or major persistent online title, ideally from pre-production through to launch.
• A proven ability to translate a Creative Director's vision, pillars, and player promise into a coherent MMO design framework, with strong creative partnership skills.
• Deep MMO systems expertise across character progression, itemisation, economies, combat and encounters, social systems, and endgame, and an understanding of how they interact as one ecosystem.
• Experience building or owning an MMO's content model, balancing content velocity against consumption and creating frameworks that let multiple teams build content consistently.
• Significant experience on a live MMO or persistent online game, using telemetry and community feedback to understand retention, economy health, and player behaviour.
• A strong understanding of the technical realities of MMO development, and experience working in Unreal Engine or similarly complex AAA environments.
• Proven experience leading and mentoring a sizeable multidisciplinary design organisation, with the confidence to make difficult calls and protect the core game from uncontrolled complexity.
• A passion for MMOs, a strong appreciation of what makes Rune Scape distinctive, and the ability to modernise its principles without simply importing conventions from other games.

What we offer:

When you join Jagex you can look forward to a generous Perks & Benefits package including:

• Private Healthcare, including Dental Plan.
• Minimum 6% Pension contributions.
• Employee Assistance Programme & onsite Counselling.
• Life Insurance.
• Discretionary annual performance bonus.
• Enhanced family leave policies from day 1.
• Flexible working hours.
• 25 days annual leave + Bank holidays & the option to buy/sell holidays + so much more!

Inclusion & Accessibility
Statement

We are committed to providing equal opportunities and creating an environment where everyone can thrive. We welcome applications from all backgrounds, and we recruit, develop, and promote…