Employment opportunities

Our beliefs about work environments are pretty simple: give talented and experienced people the tools they need, the colleagues who will stimulate them, and the opportunity to build games they want to play. We are constantly on the lookout for self-motivated, self-directed individuals who are interested in all aspects of building great entertainment experiences.

The people who work at Valve are multi-talented, with expertise in one or two particular areas. We don’t have managers or producers of any kind. We tend to hire senior people who have shipped several titles before arriving here. And we have also hired a few people right out of school when we've been impressed by an interesting game, mod, or level that the candidate built.

We are always looking for smart, talented, creative, interesting people who are solving interesting problems—people who will make our products and our company the best in the industry.

If you think Valve sounds like the place for you, feel free to contact us even if you don't see a specific job listing that matches your background.

GENERAL EXPERIENCE GUIDELINES

Artists
3 + years industry experience
Working knowledge of Maya or XSI and Photoshop, Mudbox, Zbrush a plus
Ability to take a piece from concept to final product

Animators
3 + years industry experience
Working knowledge of Maya or XSI
Ability to animate from concept to final product

Engineers
3 + years industry experience
C++ expert
Other graphics, AI or database expertise preferred

Level Designers
3 + years industry experience
Working knowledge of a professional level design tool
Programming, art or architecture experience a plus

VALVE IS ACTIVELY SEEKING CANDIDATES TO FILL THE FOLLOWING ROLES:

Steam Release Engineer
The Steam platform is one of the fastest growing multimedia digital distribution platforms in the industry today. The Steam Release Engineer is one step away from millions of customers, delivering top-tier entertainment on a daily basis. The successful candidate will have a thorough understanding of software product build/release concepts and practices, excellent technical knowledge and exceptional customer service skills.
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Senior Programmer
Senior Programmer for game run-time and tool-time software. Researches, designs and develops specialized software systems and applications for advanced three-dimensional interactive graphic elements for use in cutting edge technological media formats including advanced video game consoles, PC, and on-line gaming. Utilizes in-depth knowledge of computer science, engineering, applied mathematics skills and business background to drive next generation features for software and 3-D graphics systems, known as 3-D engines, developed by Valve.
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Senior Programmer: Web Applications
Work as part of Valve's development team, adding web applications and components to our best-of-breed computer games and pioneering e-commerce platform.
Regularly ship a variety of products from small internal tools to large-scale web applications used by millions of people per month.
Directly and meaningfully impact the experience of those players & customers.
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Senior User Experience Designer
As a designer at Valve, you’ll be part of an extremely motivated, dedicated, and experienced group of people. You’ll be joining a team that is responsible for some of the most compelling computer entertainment experiences of the last decade. You will also contribute significantly to Steam, Valve’s pioneering gaming community and e-commerce platform.
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Graphic Designer / Web Designer
As a designer at Valve, you’ll be part of an extremely motivated, dedicated, and experienced group of people. You will:
Work as part of Valve’s core applications and marketing teams, adding web sites and web components to our best-of-breed computer games and pioneering e-commerce platform.
Regularly ship a variety of web-based experiences, from internal communications to large-scale web sites used by millions of people per month.
Communicate through the web to Valve’s customers about the variety of offerings available to them in Valve’s online stores.
Work with existing product identities and brands to create compelling web-based marketing solutions.
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Senior Software Engineer, Steam
Help build future versions of Steam, the digital entertainment platform that is changing the industry. As a Senior Software Engineer, you'll be a key team member, help drive Steam architecture, and be a top coding contributor. You'll design and deliver new features to enable new game experiences, better deliver all kinds of digital content to millions of customers, enhance community features, and drive revenue. Must be experienced in all phases of a project lifecycle and have great customer focus. May mentor other developers.
Requirements: 5+ years experience building commercial software in C++. Strong C++ and fundamental computer science skills. Experience building high-scale, high-reliability network e-commerce products a plus. A bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent.

Software Engineer, Steam
Help build future versions of Steam, the digital entertainment platform that is changing the industry. As a Software Engineer, you'll design and deliver new features to enable new game experiences, better deliver all kinds of digital content to millions of customers, enhance community features, and drive revenue.
Requirements: 3+ years experience building commercial software in C++. Strong C++ and fundamental computer science skills. Network programming experience helpful. A bachelor's degree in computer science or equivalent.

Software Engineer
Utilize knowledge of Perl and Perltk to analyze game design based on in game statistics; Create and modify user interface design to accurately reflect the state of a complex system and provide a clean and aesthetically appealing interface; Utilize knowledge of game design to write customized software to implement game features according to product design and specifications for game products; Participate in developing game design documents and specifications to be implemented by the game production team. Minimum requirements: Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science (or foreign equivalent); Knowledge in design and development of tools for managing and displaying novel search results for specified query sequences using Perl and Perltk; and C++ programming and computer science skills specifically relating to User Interface design and implementation.
Senior Software Engineer
Using Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Visual Studio, C/C++, PPC VMX, DirectX9-11, Microsoft Xbox 360 SDK, Perforce, in-house engine and tools, perform efficient, rigorous engineering work in a large-scale, multi-platform, multi-threaded engine codebase, upon which a large team and multiple products depend; perform system and engine-level engineering to enhance performance and stability; produce detailed engineering task plans and time estimates, during the game pre-production phase; develop and implement novel, cutting-edge 3D graphics algorithms on multiple platforms; work in small 'cabal' groups to rapidly prototype and evaluate novel game play features; implement large-scale engine features to support new game play paradigms; perform multi-platform bug-fixing, performance profiling, optimization and testing during the game shipping phase. Minimum requirements: Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science (or foreign equivalent); and two years experience with Xbox and Xbox 360 SDKs, and multi-threading engine code; and software architecture, algorithms, and debugging on large scale multi-platform, multi-threaded engine codebase.