About PopStock
PopStock is a nonprofit EdTech platform teaching financial literacy through a simulated stock market where students trade "artist stocks" using PopStock Dollars — no real money, no crypto, no gambling.
Our goal is to make financial education more engaging, relatable, and accessible for students by combining pop culture, interactive learning, AI-powered support, and real-world market concepts in a safe classroom environment.
We are currently building the PopStock mobile app, teacher portal, student experience, and AI-assisted learning tools.
The Role
We're looking for a volunteer Game Systems Designer to help solidify the design and core gameplay loops behind PopStock's strategy layer, where students go from trading artists to founding and running their own record label.
This is a hands-on design role for someone who wants to shape the systems, economy, and progression of a real EdTech game that will be used by students, teachers, and schools. You won't be starting from a blank page. We already have an opinionated Game Design Document, a defined visual language, and a full set of mobile screen mockups. Your job is to sharpen all of it: consolidate the design into a single source of truth, tighten the loops, and balance the numbers so the game is fun, fair, and teaches what it's meant to teach.
What You'll Work On
Responsibilities may include:
- Consolidating and tightening the existing Game Design Document into a single authoritative spec
- Designing and refining the core gameplay loops, including the per-cycle and per-season decision, result, and progression flow
- Balancing the in-game economy: revenue versus payroll, contract costs, progression curves, and tier gating
- Designing and tuning core systems: the artist signals model, contracts, budgets, releases and events, banking and credit, and free agency
- Mapping progression and difficulty across tiers, from a bedroom operation up to a full empire
- Pressure-testing every system against our "decision-support, not decision-making" principle, so the game guides students without handing them the answer Keeping the experience a game first and never a worksheet, while protecting the learning goals
- Writing clear, implementable specs for a developer and AI-assisted build pipeline Collaborating with product leadership, curriculum contributors, and our UX/UI design team
What We're Looking For
Ideal candidates should have:
- Experience designing systems and/or economies for games Shipped or contributed to a management, simulation, tycoon, or strategy game Comfort balancing numbers in a spreadsheet, including faucets and sinks and progression curves
- Strong systems thinking, with an eye for how interlocking mechanics create second-order effects
- Ability to take an existing, opinionated design and make it sharper, not just create from scratch
- Clear design writing, especially GDDs and system specs Comfort working in a startup-style volunteer environment Interest in education, financial literacy, youth learning, or mission-driven products
Bonus points for:
- Serious-games, educational-games, or EdTech experience (teaching through play) Economy design or live-ops balancing experience
- Fintech, trading, or real-data simulation experience
- Systems-narrative or progression-design experience
- Experience collaborating with engineers or technical and AI-assisted build pipelines
- Prototyping skills, whether spreadsheet models, Machinations, or similar
What You'll Gain
- This is a volunteer role, but contributors will receive:
- Real design experience on a live EdTech game
- Portfolio-ready, shippable design work
- Public project credit where appropriate
- LinkedIn recommendation/reference for strong contributors
- Experience collaborating with a cross-functional product team
- Opportunity to help shape a mission-driven platform from the ground up
Compensation
This is an unpaid volunteer opportunity. There is no salary, stipend, or hourly compensation.