Level Design Lead - VALORANT

As a Game Design Manager / Level Design Lead you'll be front and center in defining the design of our game. You'll partner with leads from multiple disciplines to ensure that VALORANT’s tactical gameplay shines through. You'll be a champion for design excellence, and level up those around you. You’ll apply rigorous critical thinking and a strong dose of imagination to engineer the fun of thrilling in-game experiences. You'll work with every tool at hand and collaborate with multiple interdisciplinary teams to create player-focused designs that'll delight millions around the world.

VALORANT is Riot’s take on a character-driven tactical shooter—one where every angle matters, every decision carries weight, and competitive integrity is sacred.

As Level Design Lead, you’ll help define the future of VALORANT’s maps: evolving existing spaces, leading bold new innovations, and ensuring every map delivers on the tactical depth players expect. You’ll partner closely with design, art, and production leadership to shape how millions of players experience the game—today and years from now.

This role is both strategic and hands-on. You’ll lead a small, talented team of level designers while remaining deeply connected to the craft—jumping into the editor, guiding design decisions, and helping ship meaningful updates and reworks to a live, competitive game.

You’ll report to the Director, Game Design and work at the heart of VALORANT’s gameplay evolution.

Responsibilities:

• Set and evolve the design vision for VALORANT maps, ensuring they uphold the game’s tactical DNA while pushing the genre forward
• Lead both live map updates and major reworks, building on successes like Breeze and shaping how players engage with maps over time
• Drive innovation on new maps, exploring new ideas while protecting competitive integrity
• Manage, mentor, and grow a team of level designers, leveling up their craft through hands-on feedback, coaching, and example
• Partner closely with Map Art, Lighting, and Production, blending gameplay clarity with visual quality and shipping reliably at high polish
• Guide projects from early concept through final release, balancing player value, development cost, and long-term sustainability
• Influence senior leadership on product direction, strategy, and priorities related to maps and gameplay experiences
• Anticipate player needs across platforms, understanding how different audiences engage with competitive shooters
• Champion player empathy, using data, feedback, and intuition to evolve maps in ways that resonate with the community

Required Qualifications:

• 5+ years experience in a Level Design role; experience as a game design owner of multiple large projects in parallel with successful delivery
• 1+ years people management experience; experience with mentorship of other designers leading to a promotion or substantial positive improvements in their work
• Experience creating systemic change to a design team’s process or principles to improve output significantly across the team
• Experience leading cross-discipline teams to deliver on design goals
• Experience communicating and expressing complex and nuanced designs in simple ways
• Leadership experience resolving conflict, and when needed offering difficult feedback with respect

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience working as a developer on an FPS title.
• Strong understanding of Tactical FPS principles and can apply them effectively
• Robust understanding of the FPS market and player motivations and behaviors
• Can quickly produce a wide breadth of mechanics solutions, and generate and identify an excellent solution
• Experience developing on multiple platforms

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise and a collaborative spirit that prioritizes the delight of players. We will look at your past studies and experience, but for this role, we also look for dedicated people with a personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about players' experiences, this is the role for you!

Our Perks:

Skills & Tags

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