Game Master / Physical Operator
Run every prototype session of a brand-new immersive format, capture what works and what doesn't, and shape the experience that goes to market.
About Three Doors
Three Doors is a pre-launch immersive entertainment company. We're building a 90-minute live experience for teams of 3–6 where every player walks out with a behavioural profile derived from how they actually moved through pressure — not from a questionnaire. Two audiences, one product: consumer tickets for friends, couples and groups; corporate team-development packages on weekdays.
The founder is Tom Ball, who built DeskLodge (48,000 sq ft, £4m turnover, Sunday Times Top 10 Best Places to Work 2023, B-Corp) and has played 121 escape rooms in service of this.
We are pre-seed. We are small on purpose: a couple of full-time hires and a small consultant pool, leveraged hard by AI. This is a real founding-team seat.
The role
You are the operator. The prototype is plywood and projection — deliberately cheap so we can change anything in a day. You host real teams through it, you watch what they do, you push back on the design when it isn't working, and you own the iteration loop between one session and the next.
By month 3, you've run dozens of sessions and we know which beats land and which don't. By month 6, we have a tested 90-minute experience ready to harden. By month 12, you are training the second GM and writing the operations playbook for the launch venue.
What you'll do
- Host live trial sessions end-to-end: brief teams in, run the show, debrief out
- Capture every session against a live data feed (video, mic, heart-rate, choice log) and write the observations the rest of the team needs to read
- Stress-test puzzles, transitions, and timing in the warehouse — break things on purpose
- Work directly with Tom and the Experience Designer (consultant) on what changes next, and own the rebuild
- Run cast-of-one when needed (live actor moments embedded in an otherwise AI-narrated show)
- Build the early version of the operating manual — set-up, reset, fault recovery, safeguarding
Who you are
- You have operated an escape room, immersive show, or comparable live-format venue. You know what a peak-time room actually feels like.
- You can hold a room. Strangers calm down when you walk in, and you can read whether a team is stuck or just thinking.
- You are physically practical — wiring a sensor, drilling a fixing, swapping a projector lamp do not faze you.
- You write clearly enough that a designer who wasn't in the room can act on your notes.
- You have opinions about what's broken in the UK escape-room scene, and you can name three specific mechanisms from international rooms we should steal.
- You are excited by being employee number two, not nervous about it.
Bonus
- Theatre, stage management, or live-event background
- Comfortable on camera (the trial-session footage is part of how we develop the product)
- Basic comfort with show-control tooling (we use COGS)
How we work
- Small team, AI-leveraged. You will use Claude/ChatGPT daily and we will help you get good at it.
- Pre-venue. Early hires are building the company and the product at the same time. If that energises you, this is the job. If it makes you nervous, it isn't.
- Cockroach, not unicorn. We optimise for surviving long enough to learn, not for looking impressive.
- Bias to operating discipline over startup-theatre. Tom's background is operational real estate, not VC-circuit.
Terms
- £32–40k depending on experience
- EMI share options — meaningful founding-team grant, vesting over 4 years with a 1-year cliff
- Full-time, 5 days/week, near-full on-site at the prototype warehouse (trial sessions are the job — the iteration loop runs on you being there)
- Henley-on-Thames (Unit 1 Stuart's Lane, RG9 1RY) — easy reach from Reading, Maidenhead, High Wycombe, Oxford, West London
- 28 days holiday inclusive of bank holidays; pension auto-enrolment
How to apply
Tell us, in your own words: (1) the best immersive experience you've ever been inside and what exactly made it work, (2) the worst session you've ever run and what you changed afterwards, (3) one question you'd want to ask Tom before deciding.
CVs welcome but not required. We read everything.
Three Doors Experience Ltd is an equal-opportunity employer. We hire on judgement, behaviour under pressure, and whether you'll make the team better — not on credentials.