Senior World / Level Designer & Artist - Social VR

Senior World / Level Designer & Artist - Social VR

Location

• North America Remote / Hybrid in San Francisco preferred
• Type: Contract-to-hire, 4-month contract period
• Start Date: Immediate

Compensation

$50 – $100 USD/hour depending on experience, availability, location, and scope. If converted to full-time, compensation may include salary, benefits, and equity.

About Us

Vinci Games is building the next generation of social virtual reality games.

Our newest title, Ruffnauts, is a Pokémon-inspired social multiplayer VR game for kids where players ride collectible pets, explore alien worlds, hatch and upgrade companions, uncover secrets, and play with friends. It launched in Alpha on Meta Quest and has already grown to 61K+ reviews, making it the tenth highest-rated VR games of all time.

Our first title, Blacktop Hoops, reached over 1M installs and maintains a 4.9-star rating across 23,000+ reviews an is the 33rd highest rated game on Meta Quest. Vinci Games was also selected as a 2026 Game Changer by GamesBeat, Nasdaq, Lightspeed, and industry judges as one of the Top 25 most innovative startups reshaping gaming and interactive media.

We’re backed by Y Combinator, Makers Fund, and Kevin Lin, Co-Founder of Twitch, with team experience from CD Projekt RED, Oculus, Unity, Google, and Downpour Interactive.

We’re a small, fast-moving, remote team with a rare combination of traction, ambition, and creative freedom. We build through rapid iteration, close contact with players, and bold creative swings on one of gaming’s most exciting new platforms.

The Role

We’re looking for a hands-on Senior World / Level Designer to shape the playable world, biomes, social hub, and traversal experience of Ruffnauts.

This is an in-engine role focused on rapid prototyping, greyboxing, VR playtesting, and iteration. We need someone who can turn rough ideas into playable spaces in Blender and Unity, test them in headset, and improve them based on movement, feel, flow, scale, readability, replayability, and social interaction.

Ruffnauts is built around expressive pet riding, social play, exploration, secrets, rewards, and movement mastery. You’ll design spaces that feel great to move through repeatedly: hubs, roads, biome entrances, shortcuts, vertical routes, traversal playgrounds, and pet-class-specific paths.

We are not looking for a pure paper designer or high-level worldbuilding consultant. We need someone who can personally build playable spaces, test them, iterate quickly, and help drive them toward shippable quality.

Contract-to-Hire Path: This is a contract-to-hire role with an initial 4-month contract period. We’ll have a 30-day ramp check-in and a conversion discussion around the 90-day mark. Depending on mutual fit, performance, business needs, and agreement on final terms, we may convert to full-time, extend the contract, or conclude the engagement at the end of the initial term. If fit is clear earlier, we’re open to converting sooner.

What You’ll Do

• Rapid prototyping and greybox of VR worlds in Unity for a high speed exploration focused movement game
• Create a foundation for walking/climbing zones, riding zones, and transition zones within worlds in the game to ensure fun to traverse and explore.
• Design and iterate the Ruffnauts social hub as a playful, readable, movement-friendly space
• Designing and sculpting roads, rails, hills, terrain obstacles, ramps, cliffs, tunnels, launch points, shortcuts, landmarks, racetracks, and momentum based traversal chains
• Create beginner-friendly paths, advanced skill lines, secrets, rewards, and discovery moments with points of interest and verticality in mind
• Design spaces for different pet movement archetypes along with pathways and secrets reachable through skill mastery
• Create in-world challenges and secrets for players to discover.
• Build multiplayer spaces where players can see, follow, race, help, chase, and show off to each other
• Test frequently in headset and iterate based on VR feel, scale, com