Economy Designer

Role Overview

Join our team and help shape an unannounced Merge 2 game from the ground up. The Principal Economy and System Designer will turn a compelling merge fantasy into a clear, generous, and sustainable player journey. This is a senior, hands-on design role responsible for owning the economic and systemic foundations that connect core merging, progression, events, monetisation, and long-term engagement.

Responsibilities

• Own the design, modelling, balancing, and ongoing health of the game economy across the full player lifecycle, from first-session experience through long-term progression and live events.
• Define the Merge 2 economy: merge chains, generators, energy and action loops, currencies, rewards, inventories, orders, unlocks, progression gates, and the relationships between them.
• Design progression systems and content pacing that create clear short-, mid-, and long-term goals while preserving meaningful player choice and satisfying merge moments.
• Build and maintain economy models, simulations, and tools that forecast progression, currency flows, resource pressure, feature impact, and balancing changes.
• Establish healthy sources and sinks for currencies and resources, ensuring the economy is understandable, resilient, and appropriately tuned for both engaged and paying players.
• Partner with Creative, Product, Data, Design, Art, Engineering, and UX to translate the game vision into coherent systems, features, and player experiences.
• Design and balance meta, social, event, and monetisation systems that support retention, engagement, and revenue without compromising player trust or the core merge experience.
• Use quantitative analysis, player research, playtests, and qualitative feedback to identify opportunities, diagnose issues, and make clear, evidence-led recommendations.
• Lead economy reviews and communicate complex system behaviour, trade-offs, and decisions clearly to senior stakeholders and the wider game team.
• Set standards for economy craft, documentation, and review practices; mentor other designers and contribute to the broader design community.

Skills and Qualifications

• Core Experience: Demonstrable, hands-on experience designing and balancing economies for merge games. Experience on Merge 2 titles is strongly preferred, with a clear understanding of generators, merge chains, board pressure, energy loops, order systems, and progression pacing.
• Development Record: A record of owning or materially shaping economies on games in development and live operation, ideally in free-to-play mobile games with meaningful scale.
• Strategic Insight: Deep understanding of how merge-game economy decisions affect player motivation, retention, session frequency, monetisation, content cadence, and the perceived fairness of the game.
• Analytical Proficiency: Strong analytical capability and confidence building spreadsheet models, simulations, and practical tools to test assumptions and communicate outcomes.
• Data Utilization: Experience using product data and experimentation to balance systems, assess feature performance, and improve player journeys.
• Systems Thinking: Excellent systems thinking; able to connect individual mechanics into a coherent whole, anticipate second-order effects, and simplify complexity for players and teammates.
• Communication: Strong design judgement, written communication, and presentation skills, with the ability to create clear specifications and align varied senior perspectives.
• Leadership: A collaborative leadership style. Comfortable working across disciplines, giving constructive feedback, and creating momentum in an evolving development environment.
• Passion: Genuine enthusiasm for free-to-play games, merge games, and the craft of building player-first economies.

Nice to Have

• Experience taking a merge game from concept or soft launch through live operation.
• Experience with economy telemetry, SQL, BI tools, or scripting used to investigate player behaviour and validate economy hypotheses.
• Experience designing live events, offers, segmentation strategies, or content frameworks for a merge title.
• Experience mentoring designers or leading economy design across multiple features or teams.

About King

King is a leading interactive entertainment company for the mobile world, with over 20 years of history delivering iconic titles such as the Candy Crush franchise and Farm Heroes Saga. King is part of Microsoft and maintains a global presence with locations in Stockholm, Malmö, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Malta. The company's mission is "Making the World Playful," focusing on creating unforgettable, high-quality games through curiosity, passion, and team collaboration.