Senior Gameplay Engineer (Unannounced Project)

At ArenaNet, we’ve always believed that games are art. They have the power to communicate ideas and tell stories. They can change the way we think, reflect our cultures, and move us. As the developer of the award-winning Guild Wars game series, we’re proud to share our passion for the online worlds we’ve created with over 21 million players worldwide

ArenaNet develops and publishes games for every kind of person, which means our games need to be built by every kind of person. We believe the best experiences come from working together, celebrating differences, and helping each of our team members shine.

We are looking for a Generalist Gameplay Engineer, with professional experience shipping games in the Unreal Engine, to work directly with designers and across other disciplines to build systems, explore design ideas, provide options to designers, and seek opportunities to find the fun through regular iteration and playtests. 

As an experienced Unreal developer, you will share your knowledge with both veteran and junior teammates to guide them in learning best practices, gotchas, tips and tricks with the Unreal Engine. You will be a resource to them for questions, architectural advice, and general help where needed. 

If you find glorious purpose in working shoulder to shoulder with designers to bring form to innovative ideas; if you find joy in taking that knowledge to produce high quality code that will stand the test of time and the erratic excitement of millions of players; and, if you would love levelling up your team on an industry standard engine, then this role is for you! 

Ab​​​out Our Team 

The Engineering team at ArenaNet thrives on a wide array of perspectives, experiences, and interests. We know that the best creations come from healthy and friendly teams. Our work is woven together with the efforts of other disciplines and crafts within game development. We seek out voices and ideas that might be new to us. We are always on the lookout for ways to help each other, both within the Engineering team, and throughout the studio. 

Who We Are Looking For 

You, our ideal candidate, will have had experience working closely with designers and other disciplines using UE4/UE5 throughout the full cycle of development to ship a game. You will understand the performance costs of gameplay systems and how to diagnose, debug, and optimize them. 

Listening and communication skills will, at this point in your career, be natural to you. You will use your strong listening skills to understand design goals and will be able to creatively synthesize solutions for those goals based on your experience and the capabilities of the engine. Your strong communication skills will be used to present those options in a way that makes sense to designers and the rest of the team. 

Mentoring and teaching are activities that you take pleasure in as part of your day-to-day endeavors. You enjoy evangelizing best practices based on your experience with Unreal and respectfully guiding and mentoring teammates to fish at your level with the engine. 

You are at home working together with non-technical colleagues to develop good practices, technical constraints, and team standards. You will always be endeavoring to improve processes, tools, and workflows to maintain the quality and stability of the work produced across disciplines in a fast-paced environment. 

What You'll Need To Be Successful 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field or an equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.

• 5 years of programming experience

• C++ experience

• Unreal Engine experience

• Excellent communication and collaboration skills with technical and non-technical folks.

• Passion for gameplay engineering

• Growth mindset 

Applications will be accepted until Friday, February 27th by 10am PT. If the deadline is extended, the posting will be updated accordingly. If the position is filled before this date, the posting will be removed.

Don’t meet every single requirement on this job post? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At ArenaNet, we believe diversity in culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and backgrounds make us a better team – we celebrate it. So, if you’re excited about this role, but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification listed, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.