Steve Kirk.
Managing Consultant
I have a career spanning over 18 years recruitment experience, and I am now entering my 10th year with Pentasia.
As the longest serving member of our recruitment teams globally, I have brought a wealth of industry knowledge to all facets of our customers businesses across iGaming, Sports Betting, Casino/Slots and Lottery.
I support our Executive Search Business, delivering C-Suite and Head of positions globally whilst also managing our Game Development teams, focused on Senior Game Design, Mathematical and Art positions for Studios and Providers across Europe.
Outside of work, I am a proud father of 2 boys, and enjoy travelling with family and friends as much as I can.
Latest Steve Kirk Jobs.
Technical Artist - Slots/iGaming
Posted 28 days ago- Attractive
We’re looking for an experienced Technical Artist to bridge the gap between our artistic and technical teams, ensuring seamless integration of assets into our games at the highest quality. Role and Responsibilities Act as a liaison between programming and design teams to ensure alignment and effective collaboration. Research and develop technical tools to enhance project workflows and efficiencies. Create Figma templates to deliver the art specifications to the programmers. Solve complex technical challenges during development. Enforce technical and artistic standards as defined by department heads. Optimize environments, establish physics barriers, and resolve collision and material errors. Oversee the implementation of rendering techniques and enhance frame rate and memory performance. Perform any and all necessary optimisations on art assets before dev handover. Ensure correct dev implementation. Maintain comprehensive technical documentation. Work experience and skills Essential experience Proven experience in developing and integrating assets for slot games or similar interactive casino games. Experience working with Figma. Solid experience with Spine for animation and rigging. Proficiency in typescript and PIXI.js. Proficiency optimizing 2D assets for performance, including file size, polygon count, and load times. Understanding of rendering techniques and post-effects for visually polished results. High-level artistic proficiency in areas like proportion, colour, and composition. Understanding of art and animation pipelines. Ability to identify and implement the best tools/software for game delivery Personal qualities and behavioural traits Organization of work efficiently and effectively Creative problem-solving mindset to overcome technical challenges Excellent communication and collaboration skills to mediate between creative and technical teams Reliability in following through on assignments and instructions
Game Integrity Manager
Posted 35 days ago- Attractive
Reporting directly to the CTO of this successful game provider, you will be responsible for the following; Fraud Detection & Prevention Monitor player betting behaviors, game session data, and payout patterns to detect potential abuse or exploits. Identify collusion, bot activity, and unauthorized system access through real-time and post-event analytics. Work closely with fraud and risk management teams to implement preventative measures against game manipulation. Develop real-time alerting systems to flag unusual gaming patterns or potential exploits. Incident Investigation & Risk Mitigation Conduct investigations into player complaints, game malfunctions, and game integrity breaches. Provide root cause analysis (RCA) and recommend solutions to game-related integrity issues. Establish and refine incident response protocols for handling integrity-related issues. Game Fairness & RNG Integrity Oversee and validate the integrity of Random Number Generators (RNGs), ensuring compliance with MGA, UKGC, and other gaming jurisdictions. Conduct routine monitoring of game performance, ensuring payout rates and other statistical KPIs align with design values. Ensure that all game logic, mathematical models, and algorithms meet regulatory and fairness standards. Collaboration & Continuous Improvement Work closely with game developers, data analysts, and other teams to improve game security. Stay informed on emerging threats, industry trends, and fraud prevention techniques. Provide internal training on game integrity best practices. Key Requirements: 5+ years of experience in game security, fraud prevention, or risk management within the iGaming industry (preferably slots). Coding experience - Proactively test game security by programmatically attacking their games and APIs to identify vulnerabilities. Strong understanding of game mathematics, RTP calculations, and RNG functionality. Experience using data analysis tools for fraud detection and anomaly identification. Proven ability to work with anti-fraud systems and monitoring solutions. Strong analytical and investigative skills with a proactive approach to risk mitigation.
General Manager
Posted 48 days ago- Isle of Man, UK, Malta, Gibraltar
- Attractive
Three accomplished and experienced global iGaming companies have formed a new entity, well-funded and tasked with bringing an incredibly exciting new brand to the social gaming market in the United States; with aspirations to grow into real money gaming in markets around the world. We are looking for an experienced, dynamic and growth hungry individual to join our newly formed team and help to build the business from the ground up. The role will oversee day-to-day operations, building out and managing teams, working across partner organizations, agencies and teams and ensuring the seamless execution of the business strategy. He or she will act as the key liaison between operations and executive leadership, ensuring compliance with all regulatory and legal requirements. The ideal candidate brings industry relevant experience, and is comfortable working with remote teams, bringing geographically and culturally diverse teams together to achieve common goals. Responsibilities: Oversee all departments (internal and across partner company teams), including marketing, operations, IT, customer support, and compliance, to ensure smooth and efficient operations. Develop and implement customer engagement strategies to maximize player retention and lifetime value. Monitor and analyze business performance metrics, creating and executing plans for improvement as needed. Ensure a safe, secure, and responsible gaming environment, implementing measures to prevent fraud and promote responsible gambling. Build and manage relationships with vendors, affiliates, and third-party service providers. Conduct regular competitor analysis to identify market trends and opportunities for innovation. Lead cross-functional collaboration to launch new features, campaigns, and promotions that align with business objectives. Ensure compliance with relevant gaming laws and regulations. Requirements: 8+ years of experience in gaming, online gambling Strong understanding of the U.S. gambling landscape. Proven leadership and operational management experience. Analytical mindset with experience managing KPIs and financial reporting. Bachelor’s degree in Business, Management, or a related field.
Head of Game Design - iGaming Slots - AUSTRALIA
Posted 55 days ago- AUSTRALIA
- Attractive
As a Head of Game Design it is your responsibility to come up with market leading game designs that are as exciting as they are fresh. You must be able to work with a team and consult and coach on any math problems they might have on the games. We want someone that is not afraid to think outside of the box regarding game design. What you will be doing: Create exciting game design and math models for the slot market. Ability to work with a math team to develop new math profiles. Consulting and coaching math team on their math and game designs Present slot game ideas to VP of slot design Building prototypes & working with proto team to build them Producing detailed math profile documents Matching with server developers What we need from you: Strong math background. Experience with programming- the ability to run simulations on own math logic Strong written and verbal communication skills. Experience in iGaming Fluency in English is a must Ability to create prototypes/use programming language to aid math design Being in touch with the slot world is ideal, knowing what works and what doesn’t work – and anything in between.
Head of Game Design - SLOTS
Posted 55 days ago- Attractive
As a Head of Game Design it is your responsibility to come up with market leading game designs that are as exciting as they are fresh. You must be able to work with a team and consult and coach on any math problems they might have on the games . We want someone that is not afraid to think outside of the box regarding game design. What you will be doing: Create exciting game design and math models for the slot market. Ability to work with a math team to develop new math profiles. Consulting and coaching math team on their math and game designs Present slot game ideas to VP of slot design Building prototypes & working with proto team to build them Producing detailed math profile documents Matching with server developers What we need from you: Strong math background. Experience with programming- the ability to run simulations on own math logic Strong written and verbal communication skills. Experience in iGaming Fluency in English is a must Ability to create prototypes/use programming language to aid math design Being in touch with the slot world is ideal, knowing what works and what doesn’t work – and anything in between.
Senior Art Director - iGaming - AUSTRALIA
Posted 55 days ago- AUSTRALIA
- Attractive & competitive package
Outstanding opportunity to join this award-winning team of Slots game creators who are looking to grow so that we can release even more transformative experiences to the millions of players that enjoy our games every day. Experienced industry veterans will understand that producing blockbuster titles is no easy feat, requiring an obsessive eye for every detail including the game design, mathematics, and artwork. That’s where you would come in: we’re looking for a superstar art and design leader who can work with our team to take game concepts, breathe life into them, and help turn them into hits. If you’re able to expertly communicate your vision, deliver incredible art yourself, inspire top design personnel, and work tireless to build games in service of entertaining our players, you’ll fit right in. Reporting to the VP of Game Production and working closely with everyone involved in building a game, this is a hands-on role that can be on the ground with the team or based remotely. Core Responsibilities Work closely with the game production team to help define, conceptualise and iterate new game visions. This will include participating in design reviews, team meetings, and brainstorming sessions. Lead new game creative from start to finish. This will be particularly heavy on the conceptual development at the beginning. Present concepts clearly, concisely, and effectively to the team and to stakeholders. Execute upon concepts and established visions for games. This means both creating art assets yourself (particularly when communicating what you expect for output from teams) and coordinating with teams, agencies, consultants, firms, and designers to deliver assets for development. Prepare tidy, thoughtful, and well-structured source files for development and supervise their implementation to ensure they are delivered according to the original vision. Provide quality control over design outputs and production. Where possible, take new design solutions and bring them to life by creating prototypes. Those will be used to get a sense of how they will function in practice, help solve animation and interaction sequences and foster critical fine-tuning feedback from stakeholders. While static images give a great impression of the functionality, seeing it in action is even more valuable. Oversee deliverables, timelines and budgets. Be the point of contact for liaising with external suppliers. Assist the teams with questions about the designs and to help guide the specifications. Adjust designs based on feedback from stakeholders or from broader technical challenges, constraints, or limitations that may arise during the production process. Feedback on other proposed designs and requirements within the team, particularly in cases where it may affect the dependencies and connected interaction design. Document new controls and designs so that other team members (or other teams) clearly understand the design decisions and how to use, implement, or maintain the outputs. Update design systems and common controls where necessary to ensure that iterations are then fully documented, updated, and usable by the rest of the team. Strategic Responsibilities Define and evolve our game design language to weave consistence and game familiarity throughout our universe of titles while still giving us enough flexibility to try new things. Discover how to incorporate elements of our branding into games or how our design language can become an intrinsic element of our corporate branding strategy. Thoughtfully consider how games fit into the broader design language of the business and how an individual game’s design language may extend to sequels or series, particularly premier titles. Develop creative programs and design concepts that meet the business objectives of the organization and that advance our brand and proposition strategy. Understand what our competitors are doing differently and to help us identify elements that we may want to incorporate. Work to streamline our game design pipeline to reliably deliver high-quality, pixel-perfect assets at pace. Evaluate technologies that can help augment our design pipelines. Keep an eye on broader design trends and tools, especially within the gaming and entertainment spaces, to ensure that we are keeping up with best design practices and exceeding customer expectations. Provide thoughtful, considered feedback on the overall roadmap and design strategy. Education, Qualifications, and Background You must have worked in an art direction capacity for designing real money gaming slots. The more projects you can demonstrate, the better. You must have led art projects that have shipped AAA products for one or more major land-based slot manufacturers. Be prepared to discuss your roles in those projects and how you set the vision and shaped the final product. Key Experience Areas You must have a clear understanding and respect for our players, ideally knowing what they like, what they’re looking for, and how to give them more of the things they love. This should come from experience having developed a substantial body of work. You must be able to design. Although this is a leadership role that will be working with orchestrating different teams, you will also need to produce visual assets and designs that directly illustrate your vision and expected execution for products. You must be completely proficient with popular vector and bitmap design tools. You must be extremely comfortable working with game designers and mathematicians to visually develop conceptual mechanics and present them to players in a way that’s simple and easy to grasp. You must know how to hire, grow, and lead a team of exceptional design talent. Leadership is expected to be predominantly design-led rather than management-led. You must be familiar with hierarchical game structures and communicating excitement, anticipation, and relative value in a way that is easily understood by the player. You must be able to work with a wide variety of art styles, even if they are not your personal design style or preference. This is particularly important when working with valuable existing intellectual property that needs to stay true to the original. You must understand technical constraints and creatively work around them when necessary. Although our approach is to design the dream and figure out how to deliver it, there may be practical considerations that you should intrinsically understand. You should ideally be comfortable with prototyping more complex concepts to curb development time and reduce the risk of delivering designs that aren’t practical. Having the ability to delve into graphic design, motion graphics, animation, or video outside of product and UI design is a plus. Ideally you will have some technical background or knowledge. Understanding how developers build the interfaces and the challenges they face is tremendously valuable when designing games. You should: Stating the obvious: love slot games – to succeed in this role, you need a passion and respect for the product you’re building. Take ownership of your creative deliveries as if they were for your own company. This includes exuding a startup mentality where you are working to constantly ship great product. Be exceptionally well-organised and structured with your time. There are going to be a lot of moving parts to this role so you must bring method and structure to your approach, particularly when you consider that we have many game titles in parallel pipelines. Be extremely creative and thrive in an ultra-creative environment – your role is to bring life to games and rally teams around that vision. Adapt quickly to different teams, different types of teams (internal versus external), working styles, and art styles. Be ready to adopt a mobile-first mentality and understand how to design games for small form-factor designs. Be obsessed with details. Creating amazing player experiences means every single detail matters. In a such a highly competitive industry, all these small aspects can stack up to make all the difference. Bring an infectious design mentality that the team can adopt and easily work with. Take critical feedback well. A lot of different stakeholders are going to be looking at the designs and prototypes and providing their input – this is a critical part of the collaboration process. Knowing how to accept and act on feedback is vital to this role. Discuss constructively and diplomatically. Having many different views means that we won’t always agree – but we need to focus on collaborating solutions that deliver optimal outcomes for our customers. You will also be providing feedback to different individuals and teams to take designs forward and that needs to be done well to keep things moving. Be an expert communicator both visually and verbally. Your designs and prototypes should nearly speak for themselves; however, you still need to be able to walk different audiences through them in detail. For example, explaining them to stakeholders versus relaying the details to development. Exude transparency, openness, and objectivity. We’re here to build great games and need to collaborate effectively. Thrive in a fast-paced environment and be able to work to very tight deadlines. We work to visualise things quickly and make decisions to push the business forward. Speak English natively or be completely fluent.
Senior Art Director - SLOTS - USA
Posted 59 days ago- United States
- Attractive & competitive package
Outstanding opportunity to join this award-winning team of Slots game creators who are looking to grow so that we can release even more transformative experiences to the millions of players that enjoy our games every day. Experienced industry veterans will understand that producing blockbuster titles is no easy feat, requiring an obsessive eye for every detail including the game design, mathematics, and artwork. That’s where you would come in: we’re looking for a superstar art and design leader who can work with our team to take game concepts, breathe life into them, and help turn them into hits. If you’re able to expertly communicate your vision, deliver incredible art yourself, inspire top design personnel, and work tireless to build games in service of entertaining our players, you’ll fit right in. Reporting to the VP of Game Production and working closely with everyone involved in building a game, this is a hands-on role that can be on the ground with the team or based remotely. Core Responsibilities Work closely with the game production team to help define, conceptualise and iterate new game visions. This will include participating in design reviews, team meetings, and brainstorming sessions. Lead new game creative from start to finish. This will be particularly heavy on the conceptual development at the beginning. Present concepts clearly, concisely, and effectively to the team and to stakeholders. Execute upon concepts and established visions for games. This means both creating art assets yourself (particularly when communicating what you expect for output from teams) and coordinating with teams, agencies, consultants, firms, and designers to deliver assets for development. Prepare tidy, thoughtful, and well-structured source files for development and supervise their implementation to ensure they are delivered according to the original vision. Provide quality control over design outputs and production. Where possible, take new design solutions and bring them to life by creating prototypes. Those will be used to get a sense of how they will function in practice, help solve animation and interaction sequences and foster critical fine-tuning feedback from stakeholders. While static images give a great impression of the functionality, seeing it in action is even more valuable. Oversee deliverables, timelines and budgets. Be the point of contact for liaising with external suppliers. Assist the teams with questions about the designs and to help guide the specifications. Adjust designs based on feedback from stakeholders or from broader technical challenges, constraints, or limitations that may arise during the production process. Feedback on other proposed designs and requirements within the team, particularly in cases where it may affect the dependencies and connected interaction design. Document new controls and designs so that other team members (or other teams) clearly understand the design decisions and how to use, implement, or maintain the outputs. Update design systems and common controls where necessary to ensure that iterations are then fully documented, updated, and usable by the rest of the team. Strategic Responsibilities Define and evolve our game design language to weave consistence and game familiarity throughout our universe of titles while still giving us enough flexibility to try new things. Discover how to incorporate elements of our branding into games or how our design language can become an intrinsic element of our corporate branding strategy. Thoughtfully consider how games fit into the broader design language of the business and how an individual game’s design language may extend to sequels or series, particularly premier titles. Develop creative programs and design concepts that meet the business objectives of the organization and that advance our brand and proposition strategy. Understand what our competitors are doing differently and to help us identify elements that we may want to incorporate. Work to streamline our game design pipeline to reliably deliver high-quality, pixel-perfect assets at pace. Evaluate technologies that can help augment our design pipelines. Keep an eye on broader design trends and tools, especially within the gaming and entertainment spaces, to ensure that we are keeping up with best design practices and exceeding customer expectations. Provide thoughtful, considered feedback on the overall roadmap and design strategy. Education, Qualifications, and Background You must have worked in an art direction capacity for designing real money gaming slots. The more projects you can demonstrate, the better. You must have led art projects that have shipped AAA products for one or more major land-based slot manufacturers. Be prepared to discuss your roles in those projects and how you set the vision and shaped the final product. Key Experience Areas You must have a clear understanding and respect for our players, ideally knowing what they like, what they’re looking for, and how to give them more of the things they love. This should come from experience having developed a substantial body of work. You must be able to design. Although this is a leadership role that will be working with orchestrating different teams, you will also need to produce visual assets and designs that directly illustrate your vision and expected execution for products. You must be completely proficient with popular vector and bitmap design tools. You must be extremely comfortable working with game designers and mathematicians to visually develop conceptual mechanics and present them to players in a way that’s simple and easy to grasp. You must know how to hire, grow, and lead a team of exceptional design talent. Leadership is expected to be predominantly design-led rather than management-led. You must be familiar with hierarchical game structures and communicating excitement, anticipation, and relative value in a way that is easily understood by the player. You must be able to work with a wide variety of art styles, even if they are not your personal design style or preference. This is particularly important when working with valuable existing intellectual property that needs to stay true to the original. You must understand technical constraints and creatively work around them when necessary. Although our approach is to design the dream and figure out how to deliver it, there may be practical considerations that you should intrinsically understand. You should ideally be comfortable with prototyping more complex concepts to curb development time and reduce the risk of delivering designs that aren’t practical. Having the ability to delve into graphic design, motion graphics, animation, or video outside of product and UI design is a plus. Ideally you will have some technical background or knowledge. Understanding how developers build the interfaces and the challenges they face is tremendously valuable when designing games. You should: Stating the obvious: love slot games – to succeed in this role, you need a passion and respect for the product you’re building. Take ownership of your creative deliveries as if they were for your own company. This includes exuding a startup mentality where you are working to constantly ship great product. Be exceptionally well-organised and structured with your time. There are going to be a lot of moving parts to this role so you must bring method and structure to your approach, particularly when you consider that we have many game titles in parallel pipelines. Be extremely creative and thrive in an ultra-creative environment – your role is to bring life to games and rally teams around that vision. Adapt quickly to different teams, different types of teams (internal versus external), working styles, and art styles. Be ready to adopt a mobile-first mentality and understand how to design games for small form-factor designs. Be obsessed with details. Creating amazing player experiences means every single detail matters. In a such a highly competitive industry, all these small aspects can stack up to make all the difference. Bring an infectious design mentality that the team can adopt and easily work with. Take critical feedback well. A lot of different stakeholders are going to be looking at the designs and prototypes and providing their input – this is a critical part of the collaboration process. Knowing how to accept and act on feedback is vital to this role. Discuss constructively and diplomatically. Having many different views means that we won’t always agree – but we need to focus on collaborating solutions that deliver optimal outcomes for our customers. You will also be providing feedback to different individuals and teams to take designs forward and that needs to be done well to keep things moving. Be an expert communicator both visually and verbally. Your designs and prototypes should nearly speak for themselves; however, you still need to be able to walk different audiences through them in detail. For example, explaining them to stakeholders versus relaying the details to development. Exude transparency, openness, and objectivity. We’re here to build great games and need to collaborate effectively. Thrive in a fast-paced environment and be able to work to very tight deadlines. We work to visualise things quickly and make decisions to push the business forward. Speak English natively or be completely fluent.
Senior Slots Mathematician
Posted 66 days ago- Australia
- Attractive & competitive package
We are looking for a passionate GAME MATHEMATICIAN to join our math team. Primary responsibilities of this position include developing math models for slot machines, producing and maintaining math documentation/PAR sheets, playtesting games in development, all while maintaining a laser focus on creating the best possible player experience. You love great Slot Games and the math models behind them. You want to help develop the highest-quality games in the industry. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES Create math models based on specification documents Create and maintain math documentation/PAR sheets Help with a playable prototype creation Play the models in the prototype and provide own analysis Debug RTP together with our development team Collaborate with the Head of Game Design and other Mathematicians to create the best possible player experience Work closely with the Game Owner, Prototype Team, and Server Developers to ensure the final game Math is integrated according to the agreed vision Set and share best practices, tools, production pipelines and workflows within the Math team Follows the game development, playtest the math models and ensure that it is implemented according to the Math design specifications Participate in the Math development process of improvement KEY SKILLS Bachelor’s degree or higher in computer science, mathematics, statistics, or other related discipline Deep knowledge of Online Slot games and Math models Strong track-record of leading Slot Game Math Design with the successful production of impactful slot games 3+ years of slot game math development Software development experience: Java, C#, Python or other language that aids the simulation of your math models. Version control systems, preferably git Highly organized, experienced in running multiple projects and delivering to tight deadlines Passionate in whatever you do and want to make a difference in the iGaming Industry Strong English written and verbal communication skills Leadership attitude and not afraid to get your hands dirty Excellent teamwork skills and ability to adapt Research, play, and study casino games to stay up to date with market trends and competition Highly organized, experienced in running multiple projects and delivering to tight deadlines DESIRABLE Slot Nerd or Casino Game Geek Currently holding a position of Senior Game Mathematician at an established online casino games studio Good knowledge of casino games and real money gaming compliance, jurisdictions, trends, and regulatory bodies Self-motivated with a strong desire to learn and stay abreast of online casino game trends and developments/standards Open to challenges of learning new languages, technologies, frameworks, and approaches to Math development Experience working with project tracking tools such as JIRA