Hybrid Senior Systems Designer – Dragonwilds

at Jagex

• Job title: Senior Systems Designer – Dragonwilds
• Job type: Contract
• Experience level: Senior
• Salary: Not specified
• Degree requirement: No Education Requirement
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Cambridge, United Kingdom

About the role

• Senior Systems Designer creating and owning gameplay systems for RuneScape: Dragonwilds. Collaborate with team while working remotely within the UK and managing MMO design principles.

Responsibilities

• Design and own core scalable systems for a large-scale multiplayer, live service experience, including progression, resource management, economy, skills, and more.
• Build interconnected systems that reinforce RuneScape’s identity: freedom of playstyle, mastery, and player-driven choices.
• Prototype, test, and iterate to balance survival challenge with fairness and long-term reward.
• Integrate systems across content, engineering, and art to ensure consistency and immersion.
• Use data, analytics, and player feedback to tune systems and maintain live balance.
• Define and evolve survival mechanics such as crafting, durability, hunger, weather, and resource scarcity.
• Balance risk, reward, and progression pacing to maintain tension and engagement over time.
• Mentor junior designers, providing guidance on systemic thinking and design fundamentals.
• Collaborate with live-ops and production to support updates, expansions, and system evolution.
• Identify and resolve system-level issues or exploits before they impact the live environment.
• Advocate for player experience and RuneScape’s values across the team.
• Contribute to creative innovation while honouring the feel and history of the RuneScape universe.
• Operate autonomously with strong ownership and clear design intent.
• Continually seek new ways to improve systems, pipelines, and team collaboration.
• Deep familiarity with MMO design principles: economy loops, player-driven progression, and emergent play.

Requirements

• Proven experience designing and maintaining systems in a live MMO, multiplayer survival, or similar large-scale game.
• Demonstrable professional games industry experience working autonomously in a system design role, ideally on multiplayer or live-service titles.
• Proven experience designing and balancing interconnected gameplay systems.
• Expertise in progression, economy, and crafting systems, with an analytical and data-informed mindset.
• Strong understanding of MMO design principles, including economy loops, player progression, and emergent gameplay.
• An analytical mindset, combining data insights, player psychology, and design intuition.
• Collaborative, communicative, and comfortable working across multiple teams and disciplines to translate creative direction into functional, scalable systems.

Benefits

• 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!