About this role

A bay is a hard-surfaced room with a projector running, a group talking over each other, and a recoil-enabled training gun making noise of its own. Anything subtle is gone. What survives is transient, contrast and timing — which is exactly what tells a player they hit something.

So audio here is half the feedback, not a layer on top: a hit that doesn’t sound like a hit doesn’t feel like one. And a round is two to three minutes, so a track has to establish, build and pay off inside a pop song’s first verse — then survive doing it all night, every night.

Every team either builds a new game for Obsidian or takes one already running in the bay and makes it better.

What you’ll do

Sound design

Build the SFX library per mode: hit and destruction sounds, weapon feedback, countdown and interface audio.
Design the audio feedback for hits, misses, combos, streaks and penalties as the confirmation players react to.
Create the per-mode ambient beds, and the attract-mode audio between rounds.

Composition

Compose original music per mode, written for a two-to-three minute round rather than trimmed to fit one.
Build an adaptive system that responds to hits landing, a score staying close, and time running out.
Write victory and defeat stingers, fanfares and celebration cues that survive heavy repetition.

Implementation

Implement your own audio in-engine — MetaSounds, FMOD, Wwise or native Unity audio.
Own triggering, spatialization, the adaptive layers and the in-bay mix.

Work with the team

Tune hit audio against the VFX artist’s hit effects so the two land as one event.
Work with the Game Designer and UI Designer to align cues to game state and interface moments.

What we’re looking for

Required

DigiPen graduate — any graduating class
Portfolio demonstrating both sound design and music composition
Proficiency with a digital audio workstation — Reaper, Ableton, Logic, Pro Tools, or similar
Sound design fundamentals: foley, synthesis, layering, and mixing
Composition and arrangement ability
Able to implement your own audio in Unreal or Unity rather than handing off a folder of files

Ideal degree track

ideal, not mandatory — a strong audio candidate from any track is welcome

BA in Music and Sound Design

A master’s degree in a related field counts the same as the tracks above — an MS or MFA is equally welcome.

Preferred

Audio middleware experience: FMOD, Wwise, or MetaSounds
Experience building adaptive or interactive music systems
Understanding of spatial audio
Experience mixing for a room or a PA rather than for headphones — the difference matters more here than anywhere else on this list
Game audio work from GAM project courses
Interest in location-based entertainment audio

What you’ll learn

Mixing for a physical room with real-world noise in it, where headphone instincts actively mislead you
Treating audio as gameplay feedback rather than decoration, and tuning it against visual effects until the two land together
Building adaptive music that works inside a two-to-three minute round
Implementing your own audio end to end instead of handing assets to someone else and hoping
Writing music that survives commercial repetition — a different craft from writing something that impresses once
Improving the audio of a game that already has players, which is not the same job as scoring one from scratch

Compensation

Total hours: 180 hours
Hourly rate: $23.50 / hour
Total earnings: $4,230.00
Expected pace: About 20 hours/week, roughly 9 weeks
Payment: Bi-weekly, direct deposit
Structure: 1099 contractor

The 180 hours are the commitment; the calendar is not. Twenty hours a week for about nine weeks is what we expect in practice, but the weeks don’t have to run consecutively and the pace can flex. We set a schedule with you at the start and work around holidays, travel, and your other commitments.

This is a part-time, paid position and does not include benefits.

How to apply

Apply for this role.

Email [email protected] with Sound Designer & Composer in the subject line. Send all four of these — an application missing one of them is hard to act on, and we would rather not have to come back and ask.

01Your resumeAttached to the email — PDF preferred.
02Your GPARequired. Include it in the email body.
03A link to your portfolioA video reel and a portfolio site are preferred. Make sure everything opens without a login.
04Your general availabilityThe days and hours you can be on-site and reachable, so we can plan collaboration and playtesting around the people on your team.

Apply — Sound Designer & Composer

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