The Chinese Room has established a reputation as one of the most creative and exciting studios in the UK. We’re proud to be internationally recognised as pioneers of storytelling with a flair for creating atmospheric, rich and imaginative games.
As a Sumo Digital studio, The Chinese Room is built on passion, on finding amazing people and letting them shine. It’s an exciting time to be part of Sumo, winners of the Develop: Star Awards 2019 Best Studio; big things are on the horizon. If this sounds like a place where you’d like to make games, then we’d love to hear from you.
The Role @ The Chinese Room
We’re starting pre-production on an unannounced, original IP game and we’re looking for world-class designers and coders to join this exciting and unique project. If you think this sounds like fun, then we’d love to hear from you.
You’re an expert coder. You understand the creative processes involved in designing and maintaining good code. You’re a problem solver, you can offer advice to others and help them solve theirs. You enjoy experimenting with the problem space of game design and are able to work with designers to quickly iterate in the exploration of novel ideas. You’re a great communicator and love working as part of a team where you play an active role in helping shape the game and its development. You’ve got top notch C++ skills, experience at a senior level of development in Unreal Engine 4, and a passion turning complex code challenges into elegant gameplay experiences.
Within this role you will:
- Lead the code team to achieve the highest possible quality product
- Assist with planning and direction of the work of the code team
- Encourage best code design practices within the code team
- Write high quality source code
- Work with designers to implement gameplay and user interface elements to the designers' specifications
- Liaise with Quality Assurance to fix bugs
- Maintain stability of development environment for the entire development team
We need you to have:
- Excellent code design skills
- Have acted as lead on at least 1 shipped title
- Expert in C/C++, minimum of 5 years' experience
- At least 2 of which using Unreal Engine 4
- 4 years' experience working in the game industry required
- Experience in PC and/or console programming
- Excellent communication skills
- Excellent debugging and optimisation skills
- Practical experience with 3D math
- Worked on at least 2 shipped games
- Experience working on at least one large scale game project
You will also need to:
- Think critically, and apply analytical skills in resolving complex issues
- Find and fix complex bugs in any area of the project
- Create and own complex systems from start to finish
- Author technical designs and best practices
- Plan work and meet deadlines designated for team projects
- Mentor less experienced programmers
Our titles include the ground-breaking Dear Esther (2012), cult horror Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (2013), the VR fairy-tale So Let Us Melt (2017) and the open-world adventure Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (2015), a PlayStation 4 exclusive that won major awards across the world. This included an amazing 10 BAFTA nominations and 3 BAFTA wins.
We bring our passion and commitment to creating exciting original games to a network of studios renowned for quality and expertise. Being part of the Sumo team enables us to expand and grow in ambition and confidence, taking our reputation for storytelling into new genres. Our most recently announced game, Little Orpheus, is an Apple Arcade exclusive and we’re working on other unannounced ‘AAA’ titles that will further establish our award-winning style and reputation.
We offer a superb benefits package including generous holidays and flexi-time. We care about our people, with an emphasis on the work/life balance and out of office events such as our legendary Sumo ‘Big Day Out’, plus epic Christmas parties and much more! Our regular studio Game Jams are a highlight - winning concepts can go on to commercial release, so far including Snake Pass and the upcoming Spyder for Apple Arcade.
The Chinese Room is located in Brighton in the south of England, home to an amazingly vibrant game development scene and a cultural hotspot with fantastic food, arts, music, shopping and sports. The studio is directly opposite a gorgeous park and we’re only a short hop from the city centre, the beach, and the South Downs National Park. Gatwick Airport is only half an hour away from train, and you can be in central London in just over an hour. It’s an easy place to love!
Our environment is relaxed, friendly and built upon the basis of every team member having the opportunity to shine and have a realisable input into the games we create. We’re in the amazing position of building a brand-new team, and creating a studio culture that’s all about passion, respect, diversity, fun and togetherness. We’re looking for people that love what they do and love to share their enthusiasm with each other.
