World Designer [Fixed Term]

About the role

Senior World Designer (Fixed Term)

This page outlines the role of a Senior World Designer at Avalanche Studios Group for a fixed-term position based in Stockholm. The position is responsible for crafting significant portions of the game's open world, ensuring they are both visually compelling and mechanically sound. You will be the primary architect for a designated segment of the environment, translating high-level concepts into tangible, playable spaces.

The core of this role involves the conception, creation, and optimization of large-scale game spaces. You will be tasked with sculpting terrain, defining biomes, and arranging landmarks, roads, and rivers to create a cohesive and explorable landscape. Every decision you make regarding spatial composition is intended to enhance player navigation, discovery, and overall engagement. Your work will ensure that environments not only look impressive but also facilitate the intended gameplay loops and mechanics.

A critical part of your responsibility is balancing creative ambition with the practical realities of production. You will translate the project's vision into actionable design features, clearly defining scope and priorities. This requires a constant awareness of technical constraints and performance budgets. You will own the design and implementation of environmental elements and simpler in-game activities within your region. This includes detailed tasks such as terrain editing, material painting, and the strategic placement of Points of Interest (POIs) and landmarks to create a logical flow.

Collaboration is central to this position. You will work in close partnership with the Art, Technology, and Level Design teams to refine and optimize world-building efforts. This involves helping to identify problems and improve production workflows, which may include the creation of building prefabs, asset collections, and layout templates. You will act as a liaison, ensuring that the visual direction from Art aligns with technical requirements from Tech and design goals from Leadership and Product. Your expertise will be used to calibrate the distribution of POIs to maintain a balance between challenge, risk, and reward across the world.

Your role extends to milestone management, where you will guard pacing and scope. You will track progress against production capacity, making necessary adjustments to keep the project on schedule. You will define layout rules and build out modular asset sets to maintain flexibility for the team. also, you will verify that each zone you own contributes effectively to the larger world narrative, using composition and encounter design to tell a part of the game's story. An understanding of environmental storytelling and how to represent lore through space is vital.

The position is based in our Stockholm office, located in the Södermalm district. This location is the creative heart of Stockholm's game development scene, reflecting the studio's identity where the lush nature of *Just Cause* and *theHunter: Call of the Wild* meets the industrial grit of *Mad Max*. To foster collaboration and creativity, the hybrid work model requires your physical presence in the office on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays.

At Avalanche Studios Group, we are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone is treated equally and respectfully. We value passion and creativity above all else, and we believe diverse opinions and different experiences make our teams stronger. We encourage applications from individuals from under-represented groups who may feel they do not meet every single qualification. If you have the drive to learn and a genuine interest in tackling creative challenges, we want to hear from you.

What You Will Do

• Own the design and implementation of a large world segment, ensuring landscapes feel alive and support strong gameplay.
• Plan regions, edit terrain, and place landmarks to guide player discovery and define clear routes.
• Shape terrain and assign materials so that paths, rivers, and biomes communicate intended movement and strategy.
• Define layout rules and construct prefab sets that keep structures flexible and efficient.
• Guard milestone pacing by meticulously tracking scope against production capacity and constraints.
• Forge agreements with Art and Technology teams to align visuals with performance goals.
• Calibrate the distribution of POIs to ensure challenge, risk, and reward remain balanced.
• Maintain content pipeline standards that speed up iteration without compromising build stability.
• Verify that each zone tells part of the world story through its composition and the encounters it supports.

Who You Are

• A self-motivated developer who enjoys ownership and is not afraid to wear multiple hats.
• A professional with a breadth of expertise in World Design, including spatial flow, terrain editing, biomes, and landmark placement.
• Someone with a keen eye for composition, visual aesthetics, and the distribution of environmental elements.
• An expert in understanding dependencies between departments and the ability to adjust plans accordingly.
• An experienced World Designer (or equivalent) with a portfolio proving spatial flow and open-world coherence.
• A person who understands the dependencies and workflows of other departments and respects hybrid work rules.

Practical Notes

• This is a fixed-term employment position.
• Relocation assistance is not available for this role.
• All studio-related information is governed by a non-disclosure agreement.
• Compensation details are provided as a general guideline for the role.