About the role
Role Overview
The Principal UI/UX Designer is the senior craft and strategic authority responsible for defining and driving the overall user experience and interface direction of the game. Working across Game Design, Animation, Art, Narrative, User Research, and Engineering, the Principal ensures that the player experience is intuitive, cohesive, accessible, and aligned with the game's creative vision. You establish the standards, frameworks, and decision-making principles that guide UI and UX development from the current state through final polish. This is a highly influential individual contributor role where you are expected to mentor and guide other team members without direct people management responsibilities.
Key Responsibilities
UI/UX Vision and Strategy
- Define and maintain the overall UI/UX vision in partnership with the Creative Director, Narrative Director, Game Director, and Art Director.
- Translate the game's creative pillars and target audience into clear experience principles.
- Establish a cohesive experience across HUD, menus, navigation, onboarding, tutorials, settings, accessibility, and gameplay feedback.
- Ensure the experience remains consistent across the full player journey.
- Anticipate future production needs and evolve the UI/UX strategy as the game develops.
- Represent the UI/UX vision in director-level and cross-discipline discussions.
Player-Experience Ownership
- Understand and define how players receive information, make decisions, navigate systems, and understand game state.
- Own the quality and coherence of key player journeys and interaction flows.
- Identify usability risks, experience gaps, and conflicting design patterns before they become production issues.
- Balance clarity and usability with immersion, visual identity, and gameplay responsiveness.
- Use player feedback, usability testing, telemetry, and research findings to inform recommendations.
- Advocate for the player while balancing creative, technical, production, and business constraints.
Experience Architecture and Design Systems
- Define the game's information architecture, navigation logic, and interaction model.
- Establish reusable UX patterns and interface standards across the project.
- Guide the development of wireframes, prototypes, flows, screen specifications, and interaction documentation.
- Partner with UI Art and Technical UI specialists to establish a scalable design system.
- Ensure consistency across visual language, terminology, controls, transitions, and player feedback.
- Maintain clear experience documentation that teams can apply independently.
Cross-Discipline Leadership
- Partner with Game Design to ensure mechanics and systems are clearly communicated to the player.
- Collaborate with UI Art to align usability with the game's visual identity.
- Work with Engineering and UI Programmer to ensure designs are feasible, performant, and maintainable.
- Partner with Narrative, Audio, Cinematics, and Animation to create a unified player experience.
- Collaborate with User Research team to validate design decisions.
- Facilitate alignment and resolve competing requirements across disciplines.
- Communicate complex experience problems and recommendations clearly to both creative and technical audiences.
Production and Delivery
- Translate the UI/UX vision into actionable priorities, requirements, and quality expectations.
- Identify dependencies, risks, and resource needs early enough for production to respond.
- Define with Creative Director what good looks like at each stage of development, from prototype through final polish.
- Review work at key validation points and provide clear, actionable feedback.
- Support feature planning, scoping, and prioritization without losing sight of the intended experience.
- Help determine where iteration is required and where solutions are sufficiently validated to proceed.
- Ensure UI/UX decisions are documented, communicated, and consistently implemented.
Quality and Validation
- Establish quality benchmarks for usability, interaction, readability, consistency, and accessibility.
- Lead or support reviews, usability evaluations, and structured playtest analysis.
- Validate that implemented features meet the intended design, not only the written specification.
- Identify systemic problems rather than evaluating screens or features in isolation.
- Track recurring UX issues and influence project priorities to address their root causes.
- Provide final craft-level recommendations for critical UI/UX features.
Accessibility and Platform Experience
- Embed accessibility into the experience from the beginning rather than treating it as a final compliance pass.
- Define expectations for text readability, remapping, subtitles, colour usage, cognitive load, navigation, and assistive options.
- Ensure UI and interaction patterns account for console, PC, and other supported platforms.
- Work with technical teams to address platform-specific requirements, input methods, display environments, and certification needs.
- Support compliance with relevant first-party requirements and accessibility standards.
Craft Leadership and Mentorship
- Raise the quality bar for UI/UX across the project.
- Mentor UI/UX designers and provide guidance on problem-solving, presentation, and design rationale.
- Promote consistent methods for research, prototyping, documentation, and validation.
- Encourage constructive critique and evidence-based decision-making.
- Help develop the team's UI/UX maturity without taking ownership away from individual contributors.
- Contribute to recruitment, onboarding, and evaluation of UI/UX talent when required.
Expected Principal-Level Impact
A successful Principal UI/UX Designer:
- Creates direction rather than waiting for direction.
- Connects individual features into a coherent end-to-end player experience.
- Identifies problems that extend beyond the boundaries of a single screen or system.
- Influences directors, leads, and multiple disciplines through expertise and sound judgment.
- Provides clear recommendations when information is incomplete or stakeholders disagree.
- Produces frameworks and standards that enable other developers to work more independently.
- Balances player needs with creative intent, technical constraints, and production realities.
- Improves both the quality of the game and the effectiveness of the teams producing it.
- Is accountable for the clarity and integrity of the overall player experience, even when execution is distributed across several teams.
Qualifications and Experience
- Significant professional experience in UI/UX design, including experience on AA, AAA, or similarly complex game productions.
- Experience guiding UI/UX through multiple stages of development, ideally including at least one shipped title.
- Strong understanding of player-centred design, interaction design, information architecture, and usability principles.
- Demonstrated ability to define and communicate a cohesive UI/UX vision.
- Experience designing complex systems for console and PC games.
- Strong portfolio demonstrating end-to-end UX thinking, problem definition, iteration, and implemented outcomes.
- Experience with Unreal Engine and implementation pipelines is a must.
- Understanding of technical UI constraints, performance considerations, and scalable design systems.
- Knowledge of accessibility principles and platform requirements.
- Experience using research, playtests, telemetry, or other evidence to inform decisions.
- Strong communication, facilitation, presentation, and stakeholder-management skills.
- Ability to influence senior stakeholders without relying on formal reporting authority.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience working on action, adventure, platforming, or systemic gameplay titles.
- Experience supporting a project from early conception through launch.
- Familiarity with Unreal Motion Graphics, Common UI, or comparable runtime UI frameworks.
- Experience developing UI/UX for multiple platforms and input methods.
- Experience working with external development partners or co-development teams.
- Experience mentoring and coaching.
- Familiarity with localization, certification, and accessibility testing.
Role Boundaries
The Principal UI/UX Designer is accountable for experience direction, standards, strategic recommendations, and craft quality for UI/UX of the game. This role does NOT automatically include:
- Direct people management or performance reviews.
- Full production ownership of the UI/UX team.
- Sole ownership of UI visual art direction (this is in collaboration with Creative and Art Director).
- Sole ownership of technical implementation (this is in collaboration with Engineering Director).
The Principal succeeds through expertise, influence, clarity, and consistent ownership of the overall player experience.
Benefits and Perks
- Insurance coverage and telemedicine from day one.
- Transportation and meal allowance.
- Referral bonus.
- RRSP with employer contribution.
Working Conditions & Culture
- Located right in the heart of Montreal.
- Part of a new international game team benefiting from diversity of members and cultural exchange with partners in Hangzhou.
- Unique start-up atmosphere.
- Multidisciplinary collaboration across Game Design, Animation, Art, Narrative, User Research, and Engineering.
- Proficiency in English is essential for this role due to regular communication with colleagues and stakeholders located outside Quebec.