Lead Designer Systems and Economy

Company Description

CREATIVITY IS OUR SUPERPOWER. It’s our heritage and it’s also our future. Because we don’t just make toys. We create innovative products and experiences that inspire fans, entertain audiences and develop children through play. Mattel is at its best when every member of our team feels respected, included, and heard—when everyone can show up as themselves and do their best work every day. We value and share an infinite range of ideas and voices that evolve and broaden our perspectives with a reach that extends into all our brands, partners, and suppliers.

The Team:

Mattel Game Studios' mission is to harness the power of Mattel's iconic brands and IP to create a wide variety of engaging digital games. Our team is guided by industry leaders with decades of experience in various facets of the gaming industry. We are seeking talented individuals to join us in our mission to create innovative and engaging digital experiences that resonate with our beloved brands. If you are passionate about gaming and eager to be part of a dynamic, forward-thinking team in family entertainment, this is the opportunity for you!

Job Description

The Opportunity: 

Mattel Game Studios is seeking an experienced Lead Designer, Systems and Economy to design, build, balance, and evolve the economic systems that power our free-to-play mobile games.

We operate as a publisher with external development studios. We own the revenue, and we set the economic standard those studios build to. This role is our in-house economy authority: you will drive systems and economy design at our partner studios, not hand it to them — building the models, defining the architecture, reviewing and pressure-testing studio designs, and holding their output to a standard.

You will partner closely with product management, analytics, engineering, and live operations throughout the full lifecycle of a game — from early development and economy modeling through launch, live operation, and long-term optimization — and work day-to-day with the design, engineering, and production teams at our development partners.

The ideal candidate combines strong game design instincts with quantitative rigor. You understand how progression, rewards, resources, content systems, and player behavior interact to create a healthy and engaging game economy. You will be equally comfortable designing an economy for a new title, diagnosing issues in a live game, building models and simulations, and developing tools and frameworks that can be reused and improved across multiple projects — and you have the credibility to direct design at teams you don't manage.

A key part of this role will be helping establish scalable economy design tools, methodologies, and best practices that become more sophisticated as we develop and operate additional games.

What Success Looks Like

A successful Lead Designer, Systems and Economy will help our teams create economies that are engaging for players, sustainable over the life of a game, and capable of supporting healthy long-term business performance.

Over time, you will also build a shared economy-design capability across our game portfolio — creating models, tools, processes, and institutional knowledge that allow each new project to start from a stronger foundation than the one before it.

What Your Impact Will Be: 

• Own the economic architecture of our titles from early concept through launch and live operations — you are accountable for economy health across the portfolio regardless of which studio builds the game.
• Build and maintain the economic model for each title — covering every game system, resource flow, and monetization connection — and use it to pressure-test studio designs before they are built.
• Own the model and the math: currency architecture, sink/source balance, progression curves, drop rates, expected value, and price ladder design. Product Management owns the business targets, the LiveOps and offer roadmap, and the decision on when economy changes ship to live.
• Set the economy design standards our development partners build to — specifications, review gates, documentation, and acceptance criteria — and hold studio deliverables to them.
• Partner with each studio's design leads to ensure core gameplay, progression, collection, events, and metagame systems work together as a cohesive economic ecosystem — reviewing their designs, issuing specifications, and escalating when systems conflict.
• Work with Product Management and monetization partners to design economic systems that support business objectives while protecting player experience and long-term game health.
• Model the long-term economic impact of new features and content before they ship into live games, and give a clear recommendation on whether they should.
• Diagnose live economy health from game data and recommend tuning changes — partnering with Product to prioritize them and with the studio to implement them.
• Support Product and Live Operations in designing events, offers, reward structures, and content that interact correctly with the broader economy.
• Build reusable economy-design tools, models, and frameworks, and establish the standards and best practices that let every future title start from a stronger foundation.
• Serve as the subject-matter expert on free-to-play economy design across the portfolio, and contribute to broader product and greenlight strategy.

Qualifications

What We’re Looking For: 

• 6+ years of professional game design, systems design, or economy design experience, with significant experience on free-to-play mobile games.
• Demonstrated experience designing or operating game economies on shipped titles. Ideally three or more shipped titles in an economy or systems design role, or significant economy ownership on a highly successful live game.
• Deep understanding of free-to-play mobile economies, including progression, currencies, sources and sinks, reward structures, scarcity, pricing, monetization, and long-term player engagement.
• Experience directing or influencing design at teams you don't manage — external development partners, outsourced studios, or cross-studio standards work.
• Strong quantitative and analytical skills, including the ability to translate player behavior and game systems into mathematical models.
• Experience building spreadsheets, simulations, forecasting models, or other tools used to model and balance complex game systems.
• Strong command of progression curves, probability, expected value, distributions, resource flows, and balancing techniques.
• Experience using live-game data to diagnose economy health and make design recommendations.
• Ability to think simultaneously about individual systems and the broader economic ecosystem of a game.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across design, product, analytics, engineering, and leadership — internally and at partner studios.
• Comfortable being the only economy expert in the room, and being accountable when the model is wrong.
• Comfortable operating in an environment where designs evolve based on testing, player behavior, and live-game data.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's or advanced degree in Mathematics, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, Economics, or another highly quantitative field; a Mathematics degree is strongly preferred.
• Experience working on large-scale or commercially successful free-to-play mobile games.
• Experience owning an economy through both development and multiple years of live operation.
• Experience with statistical analysis, simulation, SQL, Python, or similar quantitative tools.
• Experience designing economies involving collection systems, randomized rewards, crafting, upgrading, competitive systems, events, or other complex metagame structures.
• Experience developing internal economy-design tools or frameworks used by multiple game teams.
• Understanding of experimentation and A/B testing methodology as applied to game systems and monetization.
• Experience in a publisher model or working with licensed IP.
• Strong familiarity with mobile free-to-play market conventions and player expectations.

Additional Information

Don’t meet every single requirement? At Mattel, we are dedicated to an inclusive workplace and a culture of belonging. If you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we still encourage you to apply. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles. Join Mattel's Talent Community and start receiving exciting updates about our company, our employees, and our culture. Also, interested in signing up for job alerts? Do so here!

How We Work:
We are a purpose driven company aiming to empower generations to explore the wonder of childhood and reach their full potential. We live up to our purpose employing the following behaviors:

• We collaborate: Being a part of Mattel means being part of one team with shared values and common goals. Every person counts and working closely together always brings better results. Partnership is our process and our collective capabilities is our superpower.
• We innovate: At Mattel we always aim to find new and better ways to create innovative products and experiences. No matter where you work in the organization, you can always make a difference and have real impact. We welcome new ideas and value new initiatives that challenge conventional thinking.
• We execute: We are a performance-driven company. We strive for excellence and are focused on pursuing best-in-class outcomes. We believe in accountability and ownership and know that our people are at their best when they are empowered to create and deliver results.

Our Approach to Flexible Work:
This role is an in-office role Monday-Thursday, and work from home on Fridays. We embrace a flexible work model designed to empower a culture of growth, optimism, and wellbeing, where every employee can reach their full potential. Combining purposeful in-person collaboration with flexibility, our focus is to optimize performance and drive connection for moments that matter.

Who We Are:
Mattel is a leading global toy and family entertainment company and owner of one of the most iconic brand portfolios in the world. We engage consumers and fans through our franchise brands, including Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price, American Girl, Thomas & Friends, UNO, Masters of the Universe, Matchbox, Monster High, MEGA and Polly Pocket, as well as other popular properties that we own or license in partnership with global entertainment companies. Our offerings include toys, content, consumer products, digital and live experiences. Our products are sold in collaboration with the world’s leading retail and ecommerce companies. Since its founding in 1945, Mattel is proud to be a trusted partner in empowering generations to explore the wonder of childhood and reach their full potential.

Mattel’s award-winning workplace culture has been recognized by Forbes, Fast Company, Newsweek, Great Place to Work, TIME, and more.

Visit us at https://jobs.mattel.com/ and www.instagram.com/MattelCareers.
Beware of recruiting scams: Mattel will only contact you through official @mattel.com or @smartrecruiters.com email addresses and will never ask for payment or sensitive personal information during the hiring process.

Mattel is an Equal Opportunity Employer where we want you to bring your authentic self to work every day. We welcome all job seekers, and all applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, veteran and protected veteran status, disability status, and or any other basis protected by applicable federal, state or local law.

Pursuant to the Los Angeles Fair Chance Ordinance and the California Fair Chance Act, qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment.

The pay range for this position is between $116,000 and $145,000 annual. The pay range is indicative of projected hiring range, however base pay will be determined based on a candidate’s work location, skills and experience. Mattel offers competitive total pay programs, comprehensive benefits, and resources to help empower a culture where every employee can reach their full potential. 
 

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