Community & Social Manager

Contract: Full-time, 1 year contract (with potential to extend)

Start date: July 2026

Location: US-based, remote, with adaptability to work with both US East and West coast team members

Work hours: Flexible schedule with regular awareness of community activity outside standard business hours. While not expected to be online at all times, this role requires the ability to monitor community channels, identify emerging issues, and support key events and milestones that may occur during evenings and weekends.

At Santa Barbara Games, we're a small indie studio in stealth mode building a stylized, session-based survival roguelite set in a dark, mystical forest launching on Steam.

We're looking for a Community & Social Manager who can help build a passionate player community from the ground up and turn curiosity into fandom. You'll be the bridge between our players and development team, fostering excitement before launch, maintaining meaningful conversations after launch, and helping create a community that players want to be part of long after they've logged off.

You'll be equally comfortable building conversations in Discord, creating social content from gameplay footage, and helping shape the public voice of the studio as we take our first title from stealth to launch.

You'll work closely with the Marketing Manager, CEO, COO, and development team to ensure player voices are heard, community sentiment is understood, and our audience feels connected to the journey of the game.

What You’ll Do

• Build and grow our community: Own and manage the studio's player-facing community channels, including Discord, Reddit, Steam Community, and social platforms. Create an environment where players feel welcomed, engaged, and excited to participate.

• Be the voice of the players: Gather community feedback, monitor sentiment, identify trends, and provide actionable insights to the development team.

• Create and publish social content: Create, edit, and package static, interactive, and short-form content for platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube leveraging gameplay, developer updates, event coverage, and community moments that drives awareness, engagement, community growth, and Steam wishlists.

• Be a public face of the game: Own live, player-facing streams around key beats including playtests, Steam events, dev updates, creator collaborations and launch. Plan talking points, assets, chat moderation, and follow-up content so each stream supports community growth, wishlist conversion, and player feedback.

• Plan and execute social campaigns: Develop content calendars and campaigns that support key milestones including announcements, playtests, Steam events, trailers, launch, patches, and content updates. Monitor performance and iterate based on engagement and community response.

• Manage Discord and community programs: Build and maintain a thriving Discord community through moderation, events, ambassador programs, and player-generated content initiatives.

• Foster creator relationships: Support relationships with streamers, content creators, and community advocates. Identify emerging creators within the community and help amplify authentic player voices.

• Organize playtests and feedback initiatives: Coordinate playtests, surveys, and feedback programs to ensure player insights are organized and actionable.

• Support launch and live operations: Support key marketing beats including announcements, Steam Next Fest, playtests, demos, launch campaigns, patches, and content updates. Coordinate player-facing communications before, during, and after major milestones.

• Own the triage of player issues: Monitor support emails, Discord, Steam Community, social channels, playtests, and test/launch feedback for player questions, bugs, confusion points, and sentiment shifts. Help maintain FAQs, known-issues updates, support workflows, and escalation notes so players get timely, clear communication and the development team receives actionable feedback.

• Leverage AI to scale impact: Use AI-powered tools to improve productivity across content creation, community management, research, reporting, and workflow automation.

What Success Looks Like

• Growing and engaged communities across Discord, Steam, and social platforms

• Consistent, high-quality content that reinforces a recognizable and authentic studio voice

• Positive sentiment, player advocacy, and community-driven content that amplifies awareness of the game

• Social content that contributes meaningfully to Steam wishlist growth and player acquisition

• Successful community events, playtests, and engagement campaigns

• Valuable player feedback that informs development decisions

• Timely communication around updates, events, and key milestones

• Clear reporting on community growth, engagement, sentiment, and key player insights

• Strong collaboration with the Marketing Manager that amplifies marketing initiatives and is consistent in tone and messaging

About You

You're passionate about games and the communities that form around them. You enjoy creating spaces where players feel heard, valued, and excited to participate. You're equally comfortable jumping into Discord conversations, planning community events, analyzing sentiment trends, and creating content that sparks engagement.

• You love games and understand what motivates players to engage, contribute, and advocate for the communities they join

• You understand how to foster healthy, inclusive, and engaging online communities

• You've built gaming communities on platforms such as Discord, Reddit, Steam, or social media

• You've created engaging social content for gaming audiences and understand how to capture opportunities, trends, and gameplay moments that resonate with players

• You understand the unique content dynamics of platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, and Discord

• You're an excellent written and spoken communicator with a strong understanding of online culture and gaming audiences

• You're comfortable with player support and issue triage, including responding calmly to frustrated players, organizing bug reports, escalating urgent issues and helping maintain trust during playtests, demos, launch and patches

• You've gathered and synthesized player feedback, understand community sentiment, and can translate both into actionable recommendations

• You actively embrace AI as a force multiplier, you're comfortable using AI tools to increase efficiency and scale your impact while maintaining quality, authenticity, and player trust

• You're highly organized, adaptable, and comfortable wearing multiple hats in a small, fast-moving team

Nice To Have

• Experience launching or supporting a game on Steam

• Experience working on survival, roguelite, horror, or co-op games

• Experience growing and moderating large Discord communities

• Experience creating and editing high-performing gaming content for social platforms

• Experience managing creator-generated content programs and user-generated content campaigns

• Experience attending or representing games at events such as PAX, GDC, TwitchCon, or Steam Next Fest

At Santa Barbara Games, we're a small team of core players building worlds we want to explore ourselves. If you love bringing players together, creating memorable communities, and helping shape the relationship between a game and its audience, we'd love to meet you!

Apply here!