Marathon AI Designer (Associate to Mid)

Bungie is looking for a technical, creative, and collaborative Associate to Mid-Level AI Designer to join Marathon’s Combatants Team. Our team is committed to fostering a creative, autonomous, and goal-oriented environment where we work cross-discipline to build memorable and compelling Combatants that challenge Players in fun and unique ways.

You will be responsible for crafting AI characters, creatures, and enemies to populate systemic encounters in Marathon’s dangerous and dynamic world. You will write design specs, create new characters, author new AI behavior, and tune AI combat difficulty. You will coordinate with AI engineers, 3D artists, animators, visual effects artists, and the audio team to breathe life into characters that provide players with both exciting challenges and clear cues to their moment-to-moment gameplay intentions.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Work with a multi-disciplinary team of content creators and engineers to create memorable AI experiences
• Write design spec documents for new characters, AI systems, game systems or tool capabilities
• Proactively solicit feedback from stakeholders, and constantly upgrade your ideas and implementations based on that feedback
• Work with Bungie's in-house character creation and data editing tools to create new characters, weapons, attacks, and abilities
• Write text-based scripts that define the behavior tree for AI in the game, using a proprietary scripting language
• Troubleshoot, debug, and fix AI behavior and performances
• Tune and maintain large amounts of content and systems

REQUIRED SKILLS

• Strong understanding of first-person action games; what makes these games fun, what the rules of thumb are for the genre, how and when to break them
• Technically proficient; able to learn and utilize complex systems and toolchains to create gameplay experiences; able to suggest workflow improvements
• Ability to analyze gameplay experiences, identify problems, and generate solutions
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

For Mid-level candidates, in addition to the above skills, we are targeting:

• Ability to operate autonomously while holding a creative vision
• Ability to create plans and evaluations for meeting the experiential needs of the players and markets
• Experience hiring, training, mentoring, and managing peer and junior designers
• Experience delegating work or ownership of an area to peers
• Ability to lead communication and “why” behind gameplay design decisions
• Having wide-ranging experience, can use a variety of professional concepts in conjunction with Bungie objectives to resolve complex issues in creative and effective way

NICE-TO-HAVE SKILLS

• Experience designing AI for first-person action games
• Experience in Animation; able to talk anticipation, follow through, character and timing
• Experience in creating action game missions or activities; able to understand how another designer will use AI characters to create a fun and memorable encounter

So you don't meet every requirement listed in this job description? Do you think your experience level is not where it needs to be? Studies show that members of certain underrepresented groups are less likely to apply to jobs unless they believe they meet every single qualification. Bungie is focused on building a diverse, inclusive, and equitable workplace. If you're interested in this position but your past experience doesn't line up perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we want you to apply anyway. The right role for you may be right around the corner!

Most Bungie full-time employees will adopt a digital first approach allowing remote work in Bungie approved locations (outside of positions identified as 100% onsite in Bellevue/Seattle, or individuals preferring a hybrid/flex environment). Prospective full-time employees who are located outside of a Bungie approved state will need to establish residency in an approved state within 45 days of their start date. Contractors will follow a digital first approach adhering to the location guidelines agreed upon by our third-party employer/vendor and Bungie. Bungie’s remote policy is subject to change at the company’s discretion.