Location: Austin-TX, Brighton-UK, London-UK
Our mission at Zynga is to connect the world through games by building games around core social experiences to deliver deep player engagement, organic acquisition and long term retention. Our portfolio of games include – CSR Racing 2, FarmVille, Hit it Rich! Slots, Words With Friends and Zynga Poker.
Working at our NaturalMotion Games studio, either based in London or Brighton. For the past four years NaturalMotion Studios have been named one of the Best Places to Work in the UK games industry by gamesindustry.biz.
We are looking for a Distinguished Engineer to join us in creating Star Wars™: Hunters, a competitive arena combat game for the Nintendo Switch system and mobile devices. Star Wars: Hunters will bring players together to engage in thrilling, team-based, multiplayer battles featuring a diverse array of distinctive new Star Wars characters.
Our Distinguished Engineer will be responsible for all technical outcomes of the Star Wars games at NaturalMotion. Our team has already soft-launched Star Wars Hunters, a third-person arena shooter built using the Unreal 4 engine, and are on a path to Worldwide launch in the near future.
The Distinguished Engineer will work closely with the technical directors of the individual games and other subject matter experts to standardize on a common core of technological solutions for the problems the games share.
Main responsibilities include:
- Leading a global team of developers and engineers to build the technical foundation of our next generation of Star Wars titles across all platforms.
- Collaborating with product managers and producers on devising feature sets, planning releases, and delivering on schedule.
- Working with the Art, UX and UI disciplines, to set standards for content creation, import pipelines, prototyping and testing
- Fostering a culture that embraces sustainable live operations, a regular cadence of game content and updates, and high-quality rapid releases.
- Reviewing production plans, backlogs, and reducing technical debt.
- Recommending technological developments and efficiency improvements.
- Developing the team to ensure quality end products.
- Driving Engineering and other studio and business-wide recruitment activities.
Typical Experiences:
- Used to both line management of a team of direct reports, while being comfortable influencing outside your function with either dotted-line relationships to software / engineering central and game teams.
- A great understanding of building and mentoring a team throughout the development cycle
- Deep experience of being a strategic problem-solver, with prior organizational leadership experience, and be able to collaborate with peers across disciplines;
- Experience with game development for mobile, PC, and console development; and have experience operating games as a live service, keeping players delighted for years.
- Previous working experience game development, ideally on all platforms.
- Ideally with Unreal, Unity engines but other game engine experience is considered too.
What do we offer (UK)?
- Competitive salary, discretionary annual bonus scheme and Zynga stock allowance
- Contributory pension scheme
- 25 days’ holiday, plus public holidays and Christmas shutdown
- Private medical care, life insurance and critical illness insurance
- Discounted gym membership and free weekly yoga class
- Flexible working hours
- Free fruit, snacks & soft drinks provided daily, as well as free lunch on Fridays
- Annual season ticket loan and cycle to work schemes
- Summer and Christmas parties and Happy Hour every Friday
HIRING UPDATE: The safety of our candidates and team members is our top priority. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our workforce transitioned to working from home, with all interviewing and onboarding being conducted virtually until further notice.
We are an equal opportunity employer and we are committed to building a diverse and talented workforce. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion, colour, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, medical condition, disability, or any other class or characteristic protected by applicable law. We welcome job-seekers, players, employees, and partners from all backgrounds to join us!
We will consider all qualified job-seekers with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law.
We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with physical or mental disabilities in order to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform essential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us at [email protected] to request an accommodation associated with your application for an open position.
Zynga does not engage in financial exchanges during the recruitment or onboarding process. We do not conduct job interviews over third-party messaging apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp or others. We will never ask you for your personal or financial information over unofficial chat channels. Our in-house recruitment team only contacts individuals via official company email addresses (i.e., via a zynga.com or naturalmotion.com email domain).
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