Description
Electronic Arts is seeking a Senior Competitive Systems Designer to help shape competitive play in Apex Legends. As a Senior Competitive Systems Designer, you will design and evolve systems supporting competitive play, including Ranked, matchmaking, competitive progression, leaderboards, scoring, rewards, and new ways for players to test their skills.
You will collaborate with various teams, including Design, Product Management, Analytics, UX, Engineering, Production, and others to create competitive experiences that feel fair, understandable, motivating, and rewarding for players across a wide range of skill levels.
Responsibilities:
- Design and own major competitive systems for Apex Legends, including Ranked progression, matchmaking-related features, scoring, and competitive rewards.
- Develop new competitive formats, limited-time modes, and structured competition beyond Ranked play.
- Define competitive goals, rules, progression, eligibility, and recognition to motivate players across all skill levels.
- Partner with Matchmaking, Analytics, Anti-Cheat, and Esports to ensure match quality and integrate integrity systems.
- Balance competitive accuracy with queue times, accessibility, social play, and long-term engagement.
- Use telemetry, feedback, and live-service learnings to define metrics, evaluate outcomes, and iterate on features.
- Collaborate across UX, Matchmaking, Analytics, Anti-Cheat, Engineering, Esports, and Community teams to align on design intent and ensure competitive integrity.
- Prototype, implement, tune, and support features throughout development and live service operations.
Required Qualifications:
- 5+ years of professional game design experience owning progression, scoring, competitive structures, or live-service features.
- Experience designing Ranked modes, rating systems, ladders, tournaments, and other competitive systems.
- Familiarity with MMR, skill-rating systems, matchmaking constraints, and competitive matchmaking concepts.
- Proven track record of taking features from concept through implementation, scripting, technical prototyping, tuning, launch, and live iteration.
- Strong implementation skills, including text scripting and ability to create prototypes using in-house tools and platforms.
- Deep understanding of complex multiplayer systems, live-service needs, and player motivations.
- Strong analytical skills and comfort using data to evaluate design problems and outcomes.
- Strong communication and cross-disciplinary collaboration skills across Engineering, Analytics, UX, Product, and Production.
Nice to Have:
- Experience with seasonal resets, placement systems, rank decay, promotion systems, or competitive reward structures.
- Experience with anti-smurfing, boosting prevention, competitive integrity, or alternate competitive formats.
- Familiarity with esports ecosystems and connecting professional competition with broader player systems.
- Deep familiarity with Apex Legends, its Ranked ecosystem, or large-scale battle royale games.