Senior Lead Campaign Designer

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Requisition ID:

Job Description:

Why Raven?

At Raven, we take pride in our unique vision for the industry, one that has inspired us for over 30 years. We’ve built a team that genuinely cares—about each other, our games, and our players. Respect is at the core of how we work: no egos, just a shared focus on creating the best experiences for our audience. We hire exceptional talent, own our mistakes, and constantly strive to improve. This is a rare opportunity to join us on the next exciting chapter of our journey. If you’re eager to join a world-class team and work on groundbreaking projects, apply today—we’d love to hear from you!

This position is located in our Middleton, WI office.

Your Mission

Your mission is to inspire and lead a highly skilled campaign design team to create cinematic, player-first experiences enjoyed by millions worldwide. In close collaboration with Design Leadership and the Creative Director, you’ll play a pivotal role in evolving the campaign team to meet the future needs of the project and studio. By championing performance, efficiency, and quality, you will provide clear guidance and achievable goals, equipping your team with the resources they need to succeed.

This leadership role is crucial in supporting our Creative Director to shape the vision and structure of in-game missions, ensuring alignment with the game’s overall narrative, mechanics, and pacing. You will oversee the creation of engaging mission goals and objectives, mentor a talented team of mission designers, and collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams to deliver cohesive, immersive storytelling. Through prototyping, iteration, and maintaining high-quality standards, you will ensure the player experience is both captivating and rewarding. This role balances creativity with technical expertise, strong leadership skills, and a deep understanding of player motivations to create memorable in-game experiences.
 

The ideal candidate will be a role model, guiding your team through challenges and change while fostering a culture of engagement, efficiency, and collaboration. Thriving in a dynamic, often ambiguous environment, you will embrace an agile mindset and work closely with both internal and external partners. Above all, we are seeking an innovative and dedicated leader who will bring our single-player campaign to life, elevating the player experience to best-in-class within the highly competitive AAA FPS space.

Key Responsibilities…   

• Mission Design Leadership
  • Help define the vision and structure of missions, ensuring their alignment with the overall narrative, mechanics, and pacing of the game.
  • From inception to ship, oversee the design of compelling mission goals, challenges, and objectives that enhance player engagement and progression.
  • Collaborate with designers, writers, artists, and engineers to deliver cohesive storytelling throughout the missions.

• Team Leadership
  • Lead and mentor a team of mission designers, providing guidance, feedback, and 1 on 1 meetings to ensure high-quality work.
  • Establish workflows and best practices to maintain consistent high quality across the campaign, helping your team members develop their skills and make meaningful contributions.

• Collaboration with Cross-disciplinary teams
  • Work closely with level designers, narrative teams, gameplay engineers, AI engineers, and gameplay scripters to ensure missions function as intended and align with the broader game world.
  • Regularly communicate with the campaign creative director and production team to manage expectations, timelines, and deliverables.

• Prototyping and Iteration
  • Develop and test mission and gameplay prototypes to evaluate player experience and balance.
  • Analyze playtest feedback to refine mission pacing, difficulty, and overall player satisfaction, ensuring that missions support diverse playstyles and offer rewarding experiences.

• Tools and Documentation
  • Create and maintain design documentation, including mission briefs, flowcharts, and implementation guidelines.
  • Collaborate with the team to work within tools and scripting systems that bring gameplay logic to life, while offering feedback on level design tools to drive continuous improvement.

• Quality Control and Polish
  • Ensure missions meet the highest standards of quality, from gameplay balance and narrative consistency to technical performance.
  • Collaborate with internal and external teams to resolve mission-related bugs, overseeing the final polish to ensure a consistent immersive and satisfying player experience.

• Stakeholder Communication
  • Act as the primary point of contact for mission design, presenting progress and challenges to key stakeholders, such as creative directors, partner studios, and executives.
  • Align mission design goals with the creative vision and player expectations, balancing creativity with technical expertise to craft memorable in-game experiences.

You Bring…

Minimum Requirements:

• 8+ years' experience in the games industry working in a design capacity, with multiple shipped titles in the AAA console / PC space.
• 5+ years' experience as a Lead Designer, including shipping a title in that capacity.
• Ability to lead by example echoed through a professional and egoless personality.
• Rock-solid communication skills.
• Solid experience with programming/scripting languages.
• An expert understanding of modern single-player design with ability to clearly discuss trends.
• Strong problem-solving skills.
• Hunger for gaming (especially online) with a broad range of game experience.
• Expertise in creating high and low-level documentation using tools like Power Point, Word, Excel, Visio, etc.
• Significant understanding of the Call of Duty campaigns current and past.

Extra Points:

• Profound understanding of the Call of Duty franchise.
• Comprehensive knowledge and understanding of the FPS games space.
• Prior experience working on a AAA first-person shooter.

About Activision

Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVI), is one of the world's largest and most successful interactive entertainment companies and is at the intersection of media, technology, and entertainment. We are home to some of the most beloved entertainment franchises including Call of Duty®, World of Warcraft®, Overwatch®, Diablo®, Candy Crush™ and Bubble Witch™. Our combined entertainment network delights hundreds of millions of monthly active users in 196 countries, making us the largest gaming network on the planet!

Our ability to build immersive and innovate worlds is only enhanced by diverse teams working in an inclusive environment.  We aspire to have a culture where everyone can thrive to connect and engage the world through epic entertainment. We provide a suite of benefits that promote physical, emotional, and financial well-being for ‘Every World’ - we’ve got our employees covered!

The videogame industry and therefore our business is fast-paced and will continue to evolve. As such, the duties and responsibilities of this role may be changed as directed by the Company at any time to promote and support our business and relationships with industry partners.

Raven Software is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, national origin, protected veteran status, or any other basis protected by applicable law and will not be discriminated against on the basis of disability.

Rewards

We provide a suite of benefits that promote physical, emotional and financial well-being for ‘Every World’ - we’ve got our employees covered!  Subject to eligibility requirements, the Company offers comprehensive benefits including:

• Medical, dental, vision, health savings account or health reimbursement account, healthcare spending accounts, dependent care spending accounts, life and AD&D insurance, disability insurance;
• 401(k) with Company match, tuition reimbursement, charitable donation matching;
• Paid holidays and vacation, paid sick time, floating holidays, compassion and bereavement leaves, parental leave;
• Mental health & wellbeing programs, fitness programs, free and discounted games, and a variety of other voluntary benefit programs like supplemental life & disability, legal service, ID protection, rental insurance, and others;
• If the Company requires that you move geographic locations for the job, then you may also be eligible for relocation assistance.

Eligibility to participate in these benefits may vary for part time and temporary full-time employees and interns with the Company.  You can learn more by visiting https://www.benefitsforeveryworld.com/.