Principal Creative Director - Growth Marketing & Lifecycle

As the Principal Marketing Creative Director, Growth Marketing and Lifecycle, you will define the creative vision for Riot’s global Growth Marketing efforts, helping players discover and return to our games. Reporting to the Director of Creative, Marketing Creative Services, you will serve as Riot’s resident expert in growth marketing creative, combining deep knowledge of the performance marketing landscape with world-class creative leadership.

Embedded with Riot’s Growth Marketing team, you will partner closely with Growth leads across Riot’s portfolio to translate each game’s strategic objectives into high-performing creative, applying proven performance practices while ensuring the work authentically reflects the game and its community.

You will own Growth Creative direction across Riot’s global portfolio, including approaches that enable effective localized creative at scale. You’ll partner with each game’s Marketing Creative Director at key milestones to align with broader brand positioning and identity, while establishing the guardrails and making the creative decisions needed for the Growth pipeline to operate quickly and autonomously.

Working with Growth strategy partners, you’ll build an iterative, data-informed creative practice - using performance signals to guide decisions while applying creative judgment to understand when to follow, challenge, or move beyond the data.

You will lead Riot’s external ecosystem of agencies, creators, and production partners - selecting the right partners, setting creative standards, and ensuring they deliver authentic, effective work at the speed and scale Growth Marketing requires.

This role requires exceptional creative judgment, deep fluency in modern UA creative, and the ability to operate independently within a complex global organization. You’ll know when to seek alignment, when to drive a decision, and when to make the creative call that keeps the work moving.

Responsibilities:

• Own the creative vision, quality bar, and operating model for Growth Marketing creative across Riot’s portfolio.
• Serve as Riot’s subject matter expert on modern UA creative, maintaining deep knowledge of evolving platforms, audience behaviors, formats, trends, and performance marketing best practices.
• Partner with Growth leads for each game to translate acquisition objectives, audience insights, and channel strategies into effective creative.
• Develop creative strategies optimized for paid social, video, mobile, creator-driven channels, and emerging media, adapting creative to the behaviors and conventions of each platform.
• Use performance data, experimentation, and audience insights to develop hypotheses, guide iteration, and improve creative effectiveness without relying on data alone to determine creative decisions.
• Build scalable creative frameworks that enable rapid production, testing, learning, and iteration without compromising quality or authenticity.
• Establish approaches for global and localized Growth Creative, partnering with regional teams to create work that scales while adapting meaningfully to local audiences, platforms, communities, and cultural contexts.
• Champion creator-driven UA, working with creators and creator-focused partners to develop work that feels native to the communities and platforms where players spend their time.
• Lead external agencies, creators, and production partners, providing clear briefs, decisive feedback, and creative direction while identifying and cultivating best-in-class partners.
• Partner with each game’s Marketing Creative Director at key milestones to align Growth Creative with brand positioning and identity, establishing clear guardrails that allow the pipeline to operate autonomously between touchpoints.
• Explore and responsibly apply AI-assisted and emerging creative tools to accelerate ideation, experimentation, variation, localization, and production while maintaining Riot’s standards for quality and authenticity.
• Establish shared standards, learnings, and best practices that allow successful creative approaches to scale across games, regions, and Growth teams.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent professional experience.
• 12+ years leading creative work within advertising, digital marketing, games marketing, entertainment, or creative agencies.
• Extensive experience leading user acquisition, performance marketing, or growth-focused creative at significant scale.
• Outstanding portfolio demonstrating digital-first creative leadership and measurable audience or business outcomes.
• Deep understanding of the modern UA ecosystem and experience developing creative for platforms such as Meta, TikTok, YouTube, mobile ad networks, and emerging channels.
• Demonstrated experience using performance data, experimentation, and audience insights to inform creative strategy and iteration.
• Experience directing external agencies and production partners 
• Experience developing creative for global audiences and adapting approaches across markets, cultures, and platforms.
• Experience influencing senior cross-functional partners and making creative decisions within complex stakeholder environments.
• Excellent creative judgment and the ability to operate autonomously while remaining aligned with broader brand and product strategy.

Desired Qualifications:

• Experience leading Growth Creative for globally recognized gaming, entertainment, technology, or consumer brands.
• Experience developing creator-led or creator-native performance marketing, including working with creators, talent, or creator-focused agencies.
• Experience building high-volume creative systems that support continuous experimentation across audiences, channels, markets, and formats.
• Deep familiarity with creative testing methodologies and the relationship between creative variables and acquisition performance.
• Experience collaborating with regional marketing teams to develop locally relevant creative within a global creative system.
• Strong understanding of gaming communities, creator ecosystems, internet culture, and how players discover and engage with games today.

For this role, you'll find success through craft expertise, a collaborative spirit, and decision-making that prioritizes the delight of players. We will be looking at your past studies, experience, and your personal relationship with games. If you embody player empathy and care about players' experiences, this could be your role!

Our Perks:

Riot focuses on work/life balance, shown by our open paid time off policy and other perks such as flexible work schedules. We offer medical, dental, and life insurance, parental leave for you, your spouse/domestic partner, and children, and a 401k with company match. Check out our benefits pages for more information.

At Riot Games, we put players first. That mission drives every decision in our quest to create games and experiences that make it better to be a player. Whether you’re working directly on a new player-facing experience or you’re supporting the company as a whole, everyone at Riot is part of our mission. And just like in our games, we’re better when we work together. Our goal is to create collaborative teams where you are empowered to bring your unique perspective everyday. If that sounds like the kind of place you want to work, we’re looking forward to your application.

It’s our policy to provide equal employment opportunity for all applicants and members of Riot Games, Inc. Riot Games makes reasonable accommodations for handicapped and disabled Rioters and does not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, handicap, veteran status, marital status, criminal history, or any other category protected by applicable federal and state law. We consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with criminal histories, in a manner consistent with applicable federal, state and local law, including the California Fair Chance Act, the City of Los Angeles Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, and the Washington Fair Chance Act.

Per the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance, the following core duties may create a basis for disqualifying candidates with relevant criminal histories:

• Safeguarding confidential and sensitive Company data
• Communication with others, including Rioters and third parties such as vendors, and/or players, including minors
• Accessing Company assets, secure digital systems, and networks
• Ensuring a safe interactive environment for players and other Rioters

These duties are directly related to essential operations, safety, trust, and compliance obligations within our organization. Please note that job duties may evolve based on business needs and additional responsibilities may be assigned as necessary to maintain operational efficiency and security.