Level Designer

Cosmic Dog

The job involves taking neighborhood environments from rough blockout to finished, textured low-poly environments in Blender, then handing them off clean for Unity, mixing custom-modeled assets with premade asset packs. Cosmic Dog LLC is a tiny indie studio run by a husband and wife team building GRASS, a cozy co-op lawn care sim coming to Steam and Xbox, published by Mighty Coconut.

Location: United States, United States Remote
Arrangement: Remote
Level: Contract
Employment: Contract
Date added: 2026-10-07
Last checked: 2026-10-16

Overview

Cosmic Dog is hiring a Level Designer Blog Newsletter Browse Jobs Art & Animation Audio Business & Operations Design Marketing & Community Production Programming QA & CS Writing Post a Job Back to all jobs See allDesignjobs Level Designer Cosmic Dog Apply for this Job Apply for this Job URL copied! This position has been closed. No items found. Posted October 7, 2026 Contract United States Remote We're looking for a level designer who can take a neighborhood from a rough blockout to a finished, textured environment in Blender, then hand it off clean for Unity. You'll build the places players mow: suburban streets, backyards, parks and whatever comes next, working from our art direction and from references, mixing assets you model yourself with premade assets and asset packs. This is a contract position starting ASAP, running the next few months with a good chance of going longer. Remote is fine. It's a hands-on, end-to-end environment role on a very small team. You'll own the levels you build, from the first graybox pass through modeling, texturing and polish. If you also think like a level designer (how a yard reads, where the mower goes, what makes a space fun to clear) and have a feel for architecture and planting, that's a big plus and we'll lean on it. About GRASS and Cosmic Dog GRASS is a cozy co-op lawn care sim coming to Steam and Xbox, published by Mighty Coconut. You take contracts around a neighborhood, mow, trim, water and clear yards (and the odd pond), rank up and unlock new areas. It's as much about neighbors and community as it is about mowing, and a big part of the fun is the places themselves: a cul-de-sac of mid-century houses, a canyon, a bay, a hill full of yard art. Cosmic Dog LLC is a tiny indie studio run by a husband and wife team with a few close friends pitching in. We've been building GRASS with an active playtest and beta community and are heading toward a public demo. Art direction. Low poly, with depth and realism coming from textured assets rather than dense geometry. Proportions and color lean a little Pixar. The yellow "Grass Hopper" mower and the "Comet Cottage" van are the base theme; the look references suburban mid-century houses from similar-style games. Environments should read lived-in and a bit aged rather than showroom clean: weathered siding, mossy shingles, cracked concrete, fences with character.

What you'll do

Block out new play areas in Blender from a brief, a reference board and a rough layout: lot lines, roads, sidewalks, house footprints, yard features and the paths a mower needs to take through them. Iterate quickly on scale, flow and readability before anything gets pretty.
Take approved blockouts through to finished environments: houses, garages, decks, fences, driveways, pools, play sets, sheds and the other pieces that make a yard feel like someone lives there.
Mix custom-modeled assets with premade assets and asset packs. Know when to build something bespoke and when to kitbash, and make purchased assets sit comfortably in our style (retexture, retrim, reproportion).
Texture and material work that fits the look: tiling, weathering and wear, trim and detail passes, consistent texel density, metre-based UVs.
Keep everything game-ready: real-world scale (1 unit = 1 m), sensible poly budgets, clean topology where it matters, organized collections and naming, pivots where Unity needs them (gates swing from their hinge posts, for example).
Export to Unity via FBX and check your work in-engine: materials, normal maps, cutout alpha, collision, lighting. Fix what breaks on the way across.
Work from feedback in rounds. Most of our iteration looks like a short list of notes on a build ("bricks too uniform, pool should be bean-shaped, fence posts need age") and a turnaround on the next pass.
Help us build and maintain a reusable kit: modular house parts, trim, fences, concrete, props, so later areas go faster than the first ones.

What we're looking for

Strong Blender skills: modeling, UV unwrapping, modifiers, collections, and a tidy approach to scene organization. You're fast at blocking out and comfortable grinding on detail.
Shipped or near-shipped environment work in a stylized or low-poly style. A portfolio that shows a space going from graybox to final is ideal.
A good eye for proportion, silhouette and color. You can look at a reference photo of a split-level with a carport and make a low-poly version that still reads as that house.
Experience working with asset packs and premade assets in a way that doesn't look like asset packs: adapting, retexturing and blending them with your own work.
Texturing and material fundamentals: tiling textures, trim sheets, weathering, normal maps, PBR basics. Experience with Substance, Quixel or a similar tool is a plus but not required.
Working knowledge of Unity: importing FBX, setting up materials, checking scale and pivots, understanding what the engine needs from a mesh.
You take direction well, ask good questions, and can turn a list of notes into a next pass without hand-holding.
Comfortable on a very small, remote team where you'll own your area and talk to the people playing it.

Strong bonus None of these are required, but any of them would move you to the top of the pile:

Level design chops. You think about how a space plays, not just how it looks. In GRASS that means the mower's path through a yard, sightlines from the street, where the hard-to-reach corners are, and how a garden layout or a fence gate turns a lawn into a small puzzle. Experience designing spaces for a sim, a co-op game or anything with traversal counts.
Architectural design. You can design a believable house, not just model one you were handed: mid-century ranches, split-levels, story-and-a-half cabins, colonials, and the garages, porches, decks and carports that go with them. You understand how trim, rooflines and foundations work well enough to invent a plausible new house that fits the neighborhood.
Vegetation. You can design and build the planting around a yard: hedges, shrubs, foundation plantings, garden beds, bramble over a gate, a few hero trees. Alpha-card foliage, game-ready plant assets and an eye for how real yards are planted (and neglected) are all useful here.
Experience with procedural or scripted workflows in Blender (Geometry Nodes, Python) for repeatable things like fences, sidewalks and modular kits.
Texture painting or hand-painted texture work in a stylized style.
You've worked on a small team where you wore more than one hat.

How we work

Small team, short loop. You'll get a brief and references, build a pass, drop it in a build, and get a list of notes back. Then repeat. No layers between you and the people making the calls.
Tools: Blender for modeling and texturing, Unity for the game, Discord for day-to-day chat, Unity Version Control for source control. We're flexible on texturing tools.
Remote is fine, within the US only. We're on Mountain Time; some overlap with our working hours is a must for review calls, but most of the work is async.
We care about things looking right in-game more than looking right in a render. Expect to check your work on the mower, in a yard, with the real lighting.
Everyone on the team plays the game and talks to the community. If you want to see your yard get mowed by a hundred playtesters the week after you finish it, this is a good spot for that.

How to apply Send us a portfolio and a few sentences about why this project. We'd rather see three pieces you're proud of than thirty.

What we want to see

At least one environment that went from blockout to finished, ideally with the blockout shown. Wireframes and poly counts are welcome.
Low-poly or stylized work with textured detail. If you've made purchased assets fit a custom style, show the before and after.
Anything that shows you think about how a space plays: a level layout, a top-down with annotations, a walkthrough video.
Bonus: houses or architecture you designed yourself, and any vegetation or planting work.

We'll follow up with a short call and, for finalists, a paid test on a real GRASS yard so we can both see how working together feels. About Cosmic Dog Featured Game s Grass is a cozy co-op lawn care simulator about rolling up your sleeves and taking care of overgrown spaces together. These properties need a little love, and with the right tools and a good crew, you can bring them back to life one yard at a time. Apply for this Job Apply for this Job URL copied! Click the Apply button to auto-fill the email address into your email program or right-click and "Copy Email Address" to paste on your own. Learn With Cosmic Dog No items found. More Jobs at Cosmic Dog It looks like this team may not have any current job openings. Sign up for our newsletter and we'll be sure to let you know when they post a new role. You may also wish to check for open roles on their website. Recent Game & Level Design jobs Lando is hiring a Scratch Game Designerto join their team into work fromthetheAnywhereScratch Game DesignerLando | AnywhereLearn More [kaleidoscube is hiring a Gameplay Polish & Technical Designer/Artist (f/m/d)to join their team into work fromthetheStuttgart, DE or EuropeGameplay Polish & Technical Designer/Artist (f/m/d)kaleidoscube | Stuttgart, DE or EuropeLearn More](/careers/kaleidoscube-gameplay-polish-technical-designer-artist-f-m-d) [Makera Games is hiring a Game Designer (Systems & LiveOps)to join their team into work fromthetheAnywhereGame Designer (Systems & LiveOps)Makera Games | AnywhereLearn More](/careers/makera-games-game-designer-systems-liveops) [Torpor Games is hiring a Lead Game Designer (m/f/d)to join their team into work fromthetheBerlin, DELead Game Designer (m/f/d)Torpor Games | Berlin, DELearn More](/careers/torpor-games-lead-game-designer-m-f-d) Meeple Corp is hiring a Game Designerto join their team into work fromthetheBath, UK or GMT ± 2Game DesignerMeeple Corp | Bath, UK or GMT ± 2Learn More Job Hunting Tips & Tricks [This Resume Landed an Interview at Amazon in <24 HoursHow do you write a resume that stands out from the crowd and gets the attention of hiring managers? Here's an approach that has consistently worked for me.Nathan BosiaPeople PersonRead more](/learn/this-resume-landed-an-interview-at-amazon-in-less-than-24-hours) [Cover Letters, Love ‘em or Leave ‘em?A job posting is an expression of pain. They have specific gaps they’re looking to fill. Your job is to communicate you understand their pain and can alleviate their suffering.Jean LeggettCareer Strategist & Leadership CoachRead more](/learn/cover-letters-love-em-or-leave-em) [Should you customize every one of your job applications?W‍ith more people applying for even fewer jobs, roles are being filled faster than ever. Which makes it that much more important to customize your resumes and cover letters.Nathan BosiaPeople PersonRead more](/learn/how-to-customize-your-resume-and-cover-letter) [A Rejection Letter: Giving Feedback to Every ApplicantWhat's it like reviewing and responding to 118 job applications? A little like this. Plus some tips and tricks to improve your next application from the POV of a hiring manager.Nathan BosiaPeople PersonRead more](/learn/a-rejection-letter-giving-feedback-to-every-applicant) Next Indie games are cool. So are the people that make them. Make cool games. Be cool people. Work With Indies. Thank you for joining! New issues are sent every Wednesday! Oops! Something went wrong. Please try again. *Sign up to receive a weekly digest of new indie career opportunities. WORK WITH INDIES We’ve been lucky to have some incredible jobs working at and partnering with some of the biggest brands in video games. But we’ve never had more fun and been more fulfilled than when we were working with indie game developers. Everyone in games should have that much fun. Our hope is that Work With Indies will connect job seekers with the most rewarding, most inspirational, and most fun jobs they've ever had. NAVIGATION

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