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Entry Level Video Game Design Jobs in California

Youth Beat

Junior Producer Apprenticeship

Oakland, CA · On-site

$20/hr

Junior Producer Apprenticeship An entry-level position in video, photography, video editing, and ... design and animation. We teach media to middle school and high school students with the goal of ...

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Entry Level Video Game Design information

See California salary details

$12

$18

$22

How much do entry level video game design jobs pay per hour?

As of Jul 26, 2026, the average hourly pay for entry level video game design in California is $18.31, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $16.59 and $19.90 per hour, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What are some typical challenges faced by entry-level video game designers in their first year on the job?

Entry-level video game designers often encounter challenges such as learning to balance creativity with technical constraints, adapting to rapid feedback cycles, and collaborating effectively within multidisciplinary teams. New designers may also find it challenging to align their ideas with the overall vision of the game and to prioritize tasks in a fast-paced environment. Gaining familiarity with industry-standard tools and workflows is another common hurdle, but most studios provide mentorship and resources to help new hires develop these skills.

What are entry level video game designers?

Entry level video game designers are professionals who are just starting their careers in the game design industry. They typically work as part of a team to help create the concepts, mechanics, and environments for video games. Their duties may include brainstorming ideas, building levels, writing game documentation, and assisting senior designers with various tasks. Entry level designers often have a background in game design, computer science, or a related field, and usually possess strong creative and technical skills. This role provides valuable experience and a foundation for advancing to more senior design positions.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as an Entry Level Video Game Designer, and why are they important?

To thrive as an Entry Level Video Game Designer, you need a basic understanding of game mechanics, storytelling, and user experience, typically backed by a degree or coursework in game design or a related field. Familiarity with industry-standard tools such as Unity, Unreal Engine, and basic scripting languages like C# or Python is often required. Creativity, teamwork, and effective communication are crucial soft skills for collaborating with multidisciplinary teams and iterating on ideas. These competencies ensure you can contribute meaningfully to game projects and adapt to evolving design challenges.

What is the difference between Entry Level Video Game Design vs Entry Level Game Art?

AspectEntry Level Video Game DesignEntry Level Game Art
Required SkillsGame mechanics, storytelling, level design2D/3D art, illustration, animation
Work EnvironmentDesign teams, collaborative softwareArt departments, creative studios
Common CertificationsGame design courses, software proficiencyArt certifications, portfolio development

Entry Level Video Game Design focuses on creating gameplay, storylines, and level layouts, while Entry Level Game Art emphasizes visual assets, character design, and animation. Both roles often collaborate closely but require different skill sets. Understanding these differences helps aspiring professionals choose the right path in the gaming industry.

What are the most commonly searched types of Video Game Design jobs in California? The most popular types of Video Game Design jobs in California are:
What are popular job titles related to Entry Level Video Game Design jobs in California? For Entry Level Video Game Design jobs in California, the most frequently searched job titles are:
What job categories do people searching Entry Level Video Game Design jobs in California look for? The top searched job categories for Entry Level Video Game Design jobs in California are:
What cities in California are hiring for Entry Level Video Game Design jobs? Cities in California with the most Entry Level Video Game Design job openings:
Entry Level Video Game Design jobs near you
Infographic showing various Entry Level Video Game Design job openings in California as of July 2026, with employment types broken down into 8% Internship, 77% Full Time, and 15% Part Time. Highlights an 100% In-person job distribution, with an average salary of $38,094 per year, or $18.3 per hour.

Motion Designer / Video Producer

Macroscope

San Francisco, CA • On-site

$150K - $300K/yr

Full-time

Posted 2 days ago

Job description

About Macroscope
Macroscope aims to be the source of truth of what's happening for any company that builds software. Our mission is to give leaders clarity and engineers time.
We help leaders understand how their products and codebases are evolving-what's changing, who's working on what, and where progress is happening-grounded in the ultimate source of truth: the code.
Macroscope is founded by former entrepreneurs who have started and sold multiple companies, and operated as product/engineering executives at public tech companies. We're fortunate to be supported by the best VC firms and angels in the business, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Thrive Capital, Google Ventures, and Adverb.
About the role
We're hiring a Brand & Motion Designer to own how Macroscope shows up in the world. Every week there are new launches that deserve high craft visual concepts and polished videos to broadcast them.
This is a full-time, in-house creative role. You'll own visual marketing assets, motion design, and video production end to end: animated launch videos, short-form video social content, and a creative pipeline that makes it scalable.
You'll work directly with the founders and our growth marketer, with full creative ownership of the craft.
What You'll Do
  • Own all visual marketing output: UI motion graphics, social video, and ad campaign materials.
  • Proactively find stories-understand the product, watch what the team is shipping and turn it into meaningful content, rather than waiting for briefs.
  • Balance high production value launch moments with a scrappy, always-on cadence of social video between them.
  • Build and own our motion pipeline leveraging coding agents and custom design tools to scale visual craft with product velocity.
  • Evolve and maintain our brand across every surface.
  • Own the story end-to-end: Pitch, design, shoot, edit, animate, and publish yourself.
What Success Looks Like
  • Every feature ships with a launch videos that matches the quality of the product.
  • A steady, recognizable cadence of video and motion content that reinforces our visual identity.
  • Stories surface from inside the company because you found them, and brought them to life.
  • The motion asset pipeline is fast and repeatable instead of a bottleneck.
  • The brand feels coherent and unmistakable everywhere it appears.
Who You Are
  • 2+ years in brand, motion, or video design, with a portfolio of shipped work-launch videos, social content, and motion graphics you made yourself.
  • Full-stack creative: comfortable across animation, editing, design tools, and ideally code-driven video like Remotion or similar.
  • A smart storyteller -you can find the narrative in a technical product update and make people actually care in 30 seconds.
  • Experience with developer or technical audiences strongly preferred; you know the difference between content that developers respect and slop they scroll past.
  • Creatively autonomous: scrappy, fast, self-directed, and happy owning everything from concept to publish.
  • You use AI tools throughout your creative workflow, and you're curious about staying up to date with the latest and greatest.

The base pay for the Brand & Motion Designer position ranges from $150k/year to $300k/year. Pay is based on several factors and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience.
About you
  • You are extremely high agency. We are a small startup and we intend to keep an extremely flat organizational structure for as long as possible. Instead of relying on people managers, product managers and heavy processes, we rely on exceptionally talented individuals with high agency to be self-motivated towards contributing to our mission.
  • You want to work at an early stage start-up. The default state of any startup is failure. The only way to overcome the daunting odds of making a startup venture successful is for a densely packed group of insanely hard working and talented people to work together to building something useful to and loved by customers. If you're not willing to work extremely hard on something high risk, this startup isn't for you.
  • You act like an owner. You put immense care and craft into what you build because you take responsibility for all parts of the product. You don't walk past broken windows.
  • You care about what we're building. Life's too short to work on something you're not passionate about. We are a small group of ambitious people who want to build something insanely great that we want to use, and that we think every company will want to use. If our mission and product doesn't resonate with you, we understand and would encourage you to find something that does.

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