Big Ambitions Staff: All 21 Roles and How Skill Works
Updated 2026-09-08 · Last verified 2026-09-08 · Steam Big Ambitions
Big Ambitions has 21 named staff roles as of the 1.0 release on 28 August 2026, and skill level does something different in almost every one of them. This page lists what each role does, where it sits, what its skill number changes, and which build the information comes from — a staffing fact from Early Access 0.9 and one from 1.0 are not the same claim.
How to read the version column
Big Ambitions spent roughly three years in Early Access and staffing was rebalanced repeatedly. In build 2048, dated 5 September 2023, Hovgaard Games reset hairdresser chair capacity, saying the original 20-to-30-minute haircut time "led to an extremely high number of Hair Stylists and very low profit margins," and cut the guards needed for full jewellery-store coverage from three to two. Both are official numbers, and both are three years old.
Every row below therefore carries a tag. 1.0 means the official 1.0 changelog or the builds 3672 and 3674 patch notes say it. EA 0.x means an official Early Access changelog says it, version named. Community, undated means the fan wiki says it and no official source repeats it; treat those as Early Access unless marked otherwise.
Every staff role in Big Ambitions
Fifteen roles sit in the community wiki's employee category. Six more arrived in official updates that the category never absorbed, which is why third-party role lists tend to stop at fifteen.
| Role | What it does | Where it works | Information version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cleaning | Mops floors; cleanliness feeds satisfaction and staff demands | All business types except warehouses; needs a Cleaning Station | Community, undated |
| Customer Service | Serves at registers and checkouts; carries a secondary cleaning skill | Retail | Community, undated |
| Security Guard | Raises the store's security rating against theft | Retail; needs a Guard Locker and a shift | Community + build 2048 |
| DJ | Skill sets how long customers stay | Nightclub; needs a DJ booth | Community; scored since 1.0 |
| Coat Check | Named as an employee type in the 1.0 changelog; now scored | Nightclub | 1.0 |
| Gym Trainer | Floor staff for gyms | Gym | Community + EA 0.7 bug fixes |
| Hair Stylist | Cuts hair; throughput set by chair and head-wash furniture | Hairdresser | EA 0.3 + build 2048 |
| Factory Worker | Produces goods; production speed scales with skill | Factory | Community + EA 0.10 |
| Lawyer | Serves clients digitally | Law Firm; Computer Workstation | Community |
| Programmer | Serves clients digitally | Web Development Agency; workstation | Community |
| Graphic Designer | Serves clients digitally | Graphic design firm; workstation | Community |
| Travel Agent | Serves clients digitally; demands a Desk Globe | Travel Agency; workstation | EA 0.11 |
| Event Planner | Serves clients digitally; demands a Desk Calendar | Event Planning Agency; workstation | EA 0.11 |
| Actor | Staffs live performance | Theater | EA 0.10 |
| Stage Crew | Staffs live performance | Theater | EA 0.10 |
| Projectionist | Runs screenings | Cinema | EA 0.10 |
| Delivery Driver | Drives the delivery run | One vehicle in a warehouse or factory | Community, Sept 2026 |
| Logistics Manager | Owns one warehouse or factory and its delivery plan | Headquarters; workstation | Community, Sept 2026 |
| Purchasing Agent | Holds the contract with one importer location | Headquarters; workstation | Community + 1.0 |
| HR Manager | Holds the health insurance your staff demand | Headquarters; workstation | Community + EA 0.11 |
| Headhunter | Sources candidates instead of an agency | Headquarters; workstation | Community + 1.0 |
| Pricing Manager | Reprices every item across a whole neighbourhood | Headquarters; workstation | 1.0 |
That is 22 rows for 21 roles: Coat Check appears only in a 1.0 bug-fix line, not as a hireable skill on any source, so it is not counted. Every headquarters employee needs its own Computer Workstation except cleaning staff, per the community wiki. The private driver from Onyx Luxury Chauffeurs, added in 1.0, is a contract rather than a hire, so it is not a staff role at all; see private driver.
What skill level changes, role by role
Skill is a 0 to 100 per cent scale, confirmed first-party by the Steam achievement Employee of the Month, whose bronze, silver and gold tiers are 50, 75 and 100 per cent. What the number buys is entirely role-dependent, which is the part most guides flatten into "higher is better".
| Role | Documented effect of skill | Backing | Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delivery Driver | Unlocks larger vehicles: 95% Freight Truck T1, 75% Vord Courier D500, 50% Mersaidi Dash, UMC Nunavut and Vord V150, 0% cars | Two wiki pages agree, both Sept 2026 | 1.0-era community |
| Logistics Manager | More delivery destinations. Magnitude disputed, see below | Three sources conflict | Mixed |
| HR Manager | Carries more employees | Single source | Community, undated |
| DJ | Customers stay longer in the nightclub | Single source | Community, undated |
| Security Guard | Higher store security rating | Single source | Community, undated |
| Cleaning | Cleans that share of the building per hour, so 25% needs four hours to reach full | Single source | Community, undated |
| Customer Service | Better service, combined with employee satisfaction | Single source | Community, undated |
| Factory Worker | Faster production | Official wording, EA 0.10 | EA 0.10 |
| Headhunter | A lower-skilled headhunter inheriting a plan threw an error until it was fixed | Official patch note | 1.0, build 3672 |
| Pricing Manager | High skill adds a suggested best price each day | Official 1.0 changelog | 1.0 |
Everything else is undocumented. No source states what skill does for a Lawyer, Programmer, Graphic Designer, Travel Agent, Event Planner, Actor, Stage Crew, Projectionist, Gym Trainer, Hair Stylist, Purchasing Agent or Coat Check employee beyond "higher is better". Training is real in 1.0, since the 3674 hotfix mentions "employees not finishing training", but no source records how long it takes or what it costs. The community wiki's own employee page still carries a stub tag reading "Info on training".
The Logistics Manager and the delivery-capacity conflict
This is where the published numbers fall apart. Each manager runs one warehouse or factory and one delivery plan, per two community wiki pages. Delivery fires only when three conditions hold: a vehicle in the facility, a Delivery Driver assigned to it, and a Storage Shelf in the receiving store. The destination count is what breaks.
| Source | Claim | Page last edited |
|---|---|---|
| Community wiki, Delivery Driver and Logistics Manager pages | Freight Truck T1 reaches 4 destinations, or 8 with a 100% manager; D500 3 or 6; mid-tier vans 2 or 4; cars 1 or 2 | 7 to 8 Sept 2026 |
| Community wiki, Importers page | Every vehicle type, "Up to 4" | Oct 2025 |
| Community wiki, Warehouse page | One warehouse tops out at 16, from two Freight Trucks and two 100% managers | 5 Sept 2026 |
Three claims, one wiki, no official figure, not internally consistent: the Warehouse page's 16 is two lots of 8, agreeing with the first row, while the Importers page's flat "up to 4" contradicts both. That same Warehouse page asks for "at least 50% skill" to drive a freight truck, where the two dedicated pages both say 95 per cent.
Timing splits the same way: two pages put the run at 02:00, the Importers page says 08:00. Officially, the EA 0.9 changelog attaches "Monday morning, 08:00" to supplier deliveries into your facility — a different event from the facility-to-store run, and possibly the source of the clash, but unconfirmed. So no delivery time is published here either.
What to do with that: treat the shape as reliable, the magnitude as untested. Bigger vehicle plus higher manager skill plus more vehicle slots equals more destinations. Count your own in game; see logistics for the full breakdown and vehicles for driver-skill thresholds.
The Pricing Manager, the 1.0 role nobody has written up
The Pricing Manager arrived with 1.0 and gets one paragraph in the official changelog: "With this new employee, you can update prices of all items in an entire neighbourhood at once. Higher-skilled employees will also suggest the best prices each day." Two mechanics sit in that sentence, and most coverage repeats only the first.
- The unit of work is the neighbourhood, not the store. One pass reprices every item across every business you own in that district. With seven neighbourhoods in 1.0, a chain spread beyond one district is not covered by one action.
- The daily suggestion is skill-gated. Low skill gives you the bulk repricing tool. High skill adds a recommended price every day, turning the role from a labour saver into an advisory one. Neither the changelog nor any other source names the threshold, so distrust any percentage quoted for it.
It sits in your headquarters on a Computer Workstation like the other managers. No achievement counts Pricing Managers, even though 1.0 added 27 new ones, so there is no public unlock rate to gauge adoption. Full detail on pricing manager, district context on businesses.
Hiring, scheduling and demands
Four recruitment routes exist. The split below is Early Access documentation dated November 2024, and 1.0 may have moved roles between agencies, so verify before making the trip.
| Route | Supplies | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Anderson Recruitment Corp. | Cleaning, Customer Service, Delivery Driver, DJ, Security Guard | Floor roles |
| City Workforce Inc. | Lawyer, Purchasing Agent, Logistics Manager, HR Manager, Programmer, Graphic Designer | Desk roles |
| Headhunter | Any role you assign the plan to | Costs a headquarters seat and a workstation |
| Job Board | Walk-ins | Free, but slower and low skill; applicants clutter the candidate list until the board is removed |
Hiring is only half of it. Every staffing achievement is worded "hire and schedule", so an unscheduled employee neither counts nor works. Each employee carries up to three demands ranked Critical, Important or Nice to have: HR Manager health insurance at Bronze/Silver/Gold, 50 per cent owner happiness for a peaceful environment, 80 per cent cleanliness for a clean building, specific furniture, and shift shapes such as part-time (10–30 hrs/week) or full-time (30–50). A pricier item of the same type satisfies a furniture demand. Those figures are Early Access wiki data, unverified for 1.0.
Rival poaching is the one visible 1.0 change with no official write-up: the community wiki now labels salary-based poaching as Early Access behaviour, with a September 2026 edit saying rivals' employees in 1.0 simply announce they are leaving. Single unofficial source; the changelog says only that rivals were made "more aggressive in their attacks".
Staff changes shipped in 1.0
Everything below comes from the official 1.0 changelog and the builds 3672 and 3674 patch notes of 1 September 2026. This is the part that dates a rival guide fastest.
| Change | Effect |
|---|---|
| Pricing Manager added | Neighbourhood-wide repricing; daily suggested prices at high skill |
| DJ and Coat Check fix | Both now count toward the customer service score |
| Wages show decimals | Exact wages are readable instead of rounded |
| Purchasing Agent sickness fix | Import orders survive a sick agent |
| Manager delivery lists | Logistics Manager and Purchasing Agent lists can be reordered |
| Recruitment Source | The candidate pop-up shows where a candidate came from |
| Uniform locker | An "Assign Uniforms" quick button, build 3672 |
| Headhunter fix | A departing headhunter now finds its own replacement |
| Quitting and training fix | Build 3674 fixed employees bugging out while quitting, which broke training, imports and deliveries |
Two earlier changes still shape staffing and are often mis-dated. EA 0.9, released 30 September 2025, made the Uniform Locker a hard requirement for changing uniforms. EA 0.11, released 18 June 2026, gave gyms soda and energy drink sales and said outright that they "don't even require an extra employee to do so". That is the mechanism behind every "the gym is easy to run" claim, and it is a staffing property rather than a profitability ranking. Full timeline on EA vs 1.0.
How deep does anyone actually staff? The achievement data
Steam publishes a global unlock rate for all 126 achievements, and nine of them count hires. That makes them the only public measurement of how large real payrolls get. Figures captured 8 September 2026, eleven days after 1.0.
| Achievement | Requirement | Bronze | Silver | Gold |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Employee of the Month | Any employee at 50 / 75 / 100% skill | 58.6% | 39.7% | 32.0% |
| Boss Man | Employ 10 / 50 / 100 people | 42.8% | 24.0% | 16.4% |
| Right and Wrong | Schedule 5 / 25 / 100 lawyers | 22.8% | 10.9% | 4.4% |
| Geek Squad | Schedule 5 / 25 / 100 programmers | 12.2% | 6.2% | 2.4% |
| Human Resources | Schedule 5 / 20 / 50 HR Managers | 11.8% | 2.2% | 0.6% |
| Freightshakers | Schedule 5 / 10 / 20 delivery drivers | 6.0% | 2.0% | 0.7% |
| Graphic Design Is My Passion | Schedule 5 / 25 / 100 graphic designers | 1.5% | 0.6% | 0.2% |
| Party Planning Committee | Schedule 5 / 25 / 100 event planners | 1.5% | 0.4% | 0.1% |
| Oh, the Places You'll Go | Schedule 5 / 25 / 100 travel agents | 1.3% | 0.5% | 0.1% |
Read the shape, not the individual numbers. A third of all players have trained someone to 100 per cent, so max skill is normal, not elite. Only 16.4 per cent have employed 100 people. Delivery drivers sit thin at 6 per cent for five scheduled, consistent with one or two vehicles per warehouse rather than a fleet. The two EA 0.11 office roles hover near 1.5 per cent bronze, typical for a role added ten weeks before 1.0. Nothing counts Pricing Managers, Logistics Managers, Purchasing Agents, Headhunters, cleaners, guards or DJs. See achievements.
Errors to route around
Three staffing claims circulate that this page deliberately contradicts.
- "There are fifteen employee types." The wiki's employee category, untouched since November 2024, is missing Actor, Stage Crew, Projectionist, Travel Agent, Event Planner and Pricing Manager. Twenty-one is the 1.0 count.
- "A Logistics Manager delivers to N stores." Whatever N you were quoted, it comes from one of three conflicting community pages. No official figure exists.
- "Jewellery stores need three fully trained guards." True until build 2048, 5 September 2023, which cut it to two. Quoting three is quoting 2023.
For more community claims that do not survive checking, see myths.
Change log
- 8 September 2026: Page created. All 21 roles checked against the 1.0 changelog, the six roles missing from the community wiki's category restored, the delivery-capacity conflict laid out without a number, the Pricing Manager's skill-gated daily price suggestion documented, and nine hiring achievements pulled with same-day unlock rates.
Frequently asked questions
How many staff roles does Big Ambitions have?
Twenty-one named employee roles as of the 1.0 release on 28 August 2026, plus a contracted private driver who is not on your payroll. Fifteen of them are catalogued on the community wiki, and six more were added by official updates that the wiki's employee category never absorbed: Actor, Stage Crew and Projectionist in EA 0.10, Travel Agent and Event Planner in EA 0.11, and the Pricing Manager in 1.0. The 1.0 changelog also names Coat Check employees in a bug fix, a role no source lists separately.
What does employee skill level actually do?
Skill runs from 0 to 100 per cent, confirmed by the Steam achievement Employee of the Month, whose bronze, silver and gold tiers are 50, 75 and 100 per cent. What the number changes depends on the role: it sets which vehicles a Delivery Driver may operate, how many destinations a Logistics Manager can serve, how many employees an HR Manager can carry, how long customers linger for a DJ, a store's security rating for a guard, and whether a Pricing Manager suggests daily prices. There is no single global effect.
What does the Pricing Manager do in Big Ambitions 1.0?
The Pricing Manager is a headquarters employee added in 1.0. The official changelog says you can update the prices of all items in an entire neighbourhood at once, and that higher-skilled employees will also suggest the best prices each day. That daily suggestion is the part almost nobody has written up. It works per neighbourhood, so a chain spread across several districts needs cover in each one.
How many stores can one Logistics Manager deliver to?
No number on this page, because the three published figures contradict each other. One community wiki page pairs a Freight Truck T1 with a 100 per cent manager for eight destinations, another says every vehicle is capped at four, and a third says a single warehouse tops out at sixteen. The mechanism is agreed: bigger vehicle plus higher manager skill plus more vehicle slots equals more destinations. The magnitude is not.
What salary do employees earn in Big Ambitions?
No source publishes wage figures, so this page does not print any. The developer has only ever described wages qualitatively: an Early Access balance pass lowered the top wage at 100 per cent skill, and 1.0 added decimal points to employee wages so you can read the exact figure in game. Check the wage on the candidate card, since it is the only reliable number and it belongs to your build.
Where do you hire staff in Big Ambitions?
Four routes. Anderson Recruitment Corp. supplies floor roles such as cleaning, customer service, delivery drivers, DJs and security guards. City Workforce Inc. supplies desk roles such as lawyers, programmers, graphic designers and the headquarters managers. A Headhunter you already employ brings in candidates, and a Job Board on the wall is free but slower and produces low-skill applicants. The agency split is Early Access documentation and 1.0 may have moved roles between them.