Senior Sound Designer

Senior Sound Designer, Audio

About Gearbox:

The Gearbox Entertainment Company is an award-winning creator and distributor of entertainment for people around the world. Gearbox Entertainment develops and publishes products through its subsidiaries, Gearbox Software and Gearbox Publishing. Gearbox Entertainment has become widely known for successful game franchises including Brothers in Arms and Borderlands, as well as acquired properties Duke Nukem and Homeworld. Gearbox’s ambition is to entertain the world and its key driving objectives include the pursuit of happiness for our talent, partners and customers, the prioritization of entertainment and creativity and a measured respect for profitability. For more information, visit www.Gearbox.com. 

Gearbox Offers:

• An industry competitive salary
• A studio that promotes and advocates for work-life balance, employee health, and personal wellbeing.
• Transparent culture with regular updates and insights into company business and priorities
• A diverse collection of IPs and a studio with the capability of establishing new ones.
• Collaborative environment with an engaging culture

About Gearbox Audio:

The Gearbox Audo department is an award-winning team with an extraordinary wealth of knowledge and industry experience.

As a member of the Gearbox Audio department, you have a creative voice when it comes to new ideas. Whether it be game systems, player feedback mechanisms, or pipeline and process improvements, we champion innovation. We want all our audio members to take ownership in their areas of passion, and to be a stakeholder in not only our games, but our company as well. We foster a tight-knight, open, and collaborative culture of camaraderie and knowledge sharing. We promote taking creative risks through experimentation.  Though bold creative leaps may stumble, the experience gained is never wasted.

Gearbox audio works proactively, collaborates cross-discipline, and believes in being at the forefront of project design to inspire creativity outside of audio in the early stages of development.

Whether leadership is your calling or craft expertise, we believe in helping our team members find career growth lanes that fit their style.

The Senior Sound Designer Role:

The Gearbox Audio Department is seeking a Senior Sound Designer who is passionate and dedicated to excellence in audio. This position reports to the Lead Sound Designer. As a Senior member, you can be handed any design task and understand the best way forward. Even in cases where the task falls into unfamiliar territory, you understand how to approach the design. Your experience brings a solid foundation of craft specific knowledge. You are a high-level design contributor that can establish and build palettes, creatively explore new techniques, and confidently share your process with the team. You are familiar with the game development pipeline and can scope feature sets, communicate cross-discipline, and collaborate with Technical Sound Designers on implementation and creative systems.

The creative investment you are bringing makes you eager to demonstrate, share, and learn techniques, give, and solicit feedback, and be a stakeholder in the subsets of the game.

Senior Sound Designer Requirements

Role Expectations:

• Work closely with the Lead Sound Designer and Director of Sound Design to execute on the creative audio vision.
• Design and create original high quality sound effects for a wide range of in-game features and systems,
• Deliver assets for diverse and forefront game feature sets of audio such as weapons, character audio, and more.
• Confidently take sound design ownership over subsets of the game with a high degree of self-driven autonomy.
• Implementation of sound effects into Wwise and Unreal 5, with an adept understanding of how those assets fit into a game mix. 
• Create and maintain style guides based on aesthetic vision.
• Collaborate cross-discipline and effectively communicate feedback.
• Record and edit original source to for the department’s custom SFX library and to be used in-game
• Participation and contribution in audio department sound jams and source building.
• Demonstrate and share best practices and techniques with other Sound Designers.
• Maintain a good work ethic and a positive attitude.

Qualifications: 

• 3-5+ years in the industry working as a AAA sound design for games.
• Highly creative and capable of taking ownership.

• An understanding of game design and player feedback principles

• Experience with Wwise and Unreal. 
• Thorough understanding of the game development pipeline.
• Worked on at least one project from beginning to end.
• Adept ability at mixing, editing, and sound design techniques.
• Up to date with game industry trends and modern sound design techniques for games. 
• Familiarity with sound library database applications such as SoundMiner or Basehead. 
• Experienced with recording original source.
• Well versed in how to create clear and thorough documentation.
• Knowledge of mix and loudness specifications in a variety of media. 
• Ability to take direction and work collaboratively.

Bonus Experience 

• Experience with Reaper
• Knowledge of 3D audio (Ambisonics/HRTF). 
• Experience working with multiplayer or co-op games.
• Experience with scripting or programming languages. 
• Avid gamer, familiar with various games throughout the industry. 
• Professional postproduction experience, particularly with multichannel environments (I.e. Surround or ATMOS) 

Gearbox Entertainment believes that all team members should be able to enjoy a work environment free from all forms of discrimination and harassment. We are committed to reflecting the diversity of the world we strive to entertain. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, we provide fair and equal treatment to all team members and applicants. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy or maternity, veteran status, or any other status protected by applicable national, federal, state or local law.