Role Overview

We are seeking aTechnical Game Designerto design and implement engaging, lightweight, and sticky loops for a Twitch/Discord-native product. This person will thrive in a scrappy startup environment, be action-oriented, and comfortable taking founder vision and translating it into mechanics that can be tested and shipped quickly. They should be as comfortable designing systems as they are prototyping them and working directly with communities to iterate.

This role is not about theorycrafting or writing lengthy design docs. It is about designing, prototyping, testing live, and iterating in partnership with engineers, streamers, and players. The Technical Game Designer will serve as the bridge between vision and implementation for our core game mechanics.

Core Responsibilities
* Systems & Economy Design: Define point systems, progression, rewards, balance, and fairness mechanics. Design comeback mechanics and prevent runaway leaders.
* Prototyping & Implementation: Use lightweight tools, configs, and scripting to stand up new mechanics that can be tested with players quickly, reducing engineering lift and helping players find the fun.
* Event & Loop Design: Create new event types, determine pacing, and structure rewards. Develop season arcs and design modular systems that work across diverse streamer communities.
* UX & Onboarding Flow: Simplify player onboarding and interaction in chat. Reduce cognitive load and design for short-session play. Provide streamers with clear messaging and scripts.
* Live Ops & Retention Mechanics: Design FOMO loops, time-limited events, streaks, and scarcity mechanics to increase engagement. Continuously tune live features for impact.
* Community Feedback Integration: Work closely with streamer communities, gather player feedback directly, and iterate on mechanics based on live engagement.

Day in the Life at Gyld
* Morning:Review community feedback and engagement data from yesterday’s streams with founders. Identify which mechanics underperformed and which need iteration.
* Midday:Prototype a new event or mechanic directly in JavaScript/TypeScript or configs. Hack it together so it can run live in a test stream today.
* Afternoon:Run the mechanic with a small streamer community. Watch chat behavior in real time, talk with the streamer, and note what sticks.
* End of day:Adjust rewards, pacing, or messaging based on what you saw. Hand engineers a validated, lightweight spec for anything that needs production hardening.
* Weekly cadence:You’re expected to ship experiments, not just design them. Each week ends with something playable or testable, not just a document.

What We’re Looking For
* Ahands-on builder: not just theory, but someone who can design and prototype mechanics that run in real contexts.
* Asystems-first mindset: strong grounding in economy design, progression loops, and retention mechanics.
* Technical fluency: comfortable working in JavaScript/TypeScript (our primary languages) enough to prototype mechanics, configure features, and run live tests. Production-level polish isn’t required — scrappy hacks that let us move fast are encouraged.
* Player-facing confidence: willing and able to interact with communities, gather live feedback, and adjust designs quickly.
* Startup-ready mentality: thrives in ambiguity, moves fast, and prioritizes shipping and iterating over perfection.

Background & Experience
* 3+ years of professional game design experience, ideally in indie, mobile/F2P, or social/streaming games.
* Shipped at least one live product that includedprogression or economy systems.
* Experience working withlive ops/event-based systems(daily quests, streaks, limited-time events, seasonal content).
* Demonstrated ability toprototype in code or configs(JavaScript/TypeScript preferred; Lua, Python, or Unity C# also acceptable).
* Familiarity withcommunity/social-driven environmentssuch as Discord bots, Twitch extensions, or games with direct player feedback loops.

Not a Fit If
* You only want to write design documents without implementing and iterating on live feedback.
* You prefer large studio pipelines with heavy specialization, deep QA integrations, and multi-department workflows.
* You shy away from direct player interaction and iteration