About the Role

Fortis is on a mission to create games where players truly belong — and Twilight Towers is now in soft launch. As Senior Design Manager, you will play a critical role in scaling the game toward global launch by owning live-ops and content systems while multiplying the effectiveness of the design team. This role is intentionally hybrid. You will combine hands-on design ownership with people leadership and production fluency, taking responsibility for key live-game systems (events, content frameworks, progression-facing features) and using that ownership to increase team throughput, quality, and cross-discipline efficiency. Partnering closely with the Game Director and senior leadership, you will turn high-level goals into clear, actionable design plans, manage and develop junior and mid-level designers, and ensure work moves smoothly from concept through implementation and live iteration. Success in this role means taking meaningful ownership off senior leaders’ plates and making the team faster, clearer, and more effective as Twilight Towers scales.

What you’ll achieve

You will partner with the Game Director and cross-disciplinary leads to:

• Own live-ops and content systems for Twilight Towers, including event design, content frameworks, progression-facing features, and related tuning and iteration.
• Lead and manage a sub-team of designers, increasing overall team efficiency and enabling scale by coaching, mentoring, and setting clear expectations.
• Translate high-level product and business goals into clear, implementable design specifications that unblock engineering, art, and production.
• Hold the quality bar for your ownership area by reviewing work, giving concrete feedback, and guiding designers toward stronger solutions.
• Improve cross-discipline execution by proactively coordinating dependencies (e.g., asset needs, scope boundaries, production timing).
• Contribute to live-game decision-making by analyzing player data, KPIs, and feedback, and rapidly iterating on designs in partnership with Product and Analytics.
• Build and share expertise in mobile F2P best practices, live-ops excellence, and the evolving competitive landscape.

What you’ll need to be successful

• Proven experience owning live-ops or content systems in a mobile game-as-a-service environment.
• Define and evolve what “good” looks like, establishing shared principles, techniques, and working norms that raise quality, clarity, and decision-making across the team.
• Strong applied design judgment, with fluency across systems, content, and experiential design, and depth in at least one area.
• Comfort designing from first principles, with a working understanding of player psychology, economies, progression, and retention mechanics.
• Ability to own and deliver scoped areas of the game independently, making decisions without constant oversight.
• Demonstrated people leadership: experience managing, coaching, and developing junior or mid-level designers.
• Production fluency: ability to work cross-functionally and translate design intent into clear, actionable inputs for engineering, art, and production.
• Clear communication and decision-making skills, with the confidence to set direction, prioritize trade-offs, and move work forward.
• Strong understanding of mobile F2P, live-ops cadence, and contemporary market best practices.
• Experience with merge, tower defence, or adjacent genres is a strong plus