Senior Software Engineer (Match AI)

Sports Interactive is seeking a Senior Software Engineer specializing in Match AI to join their London studio. This role involves enhancing the state-of-the-art in-house match engine for Football Manager, focusing on improving realism and performance through AI decision-making processes. The engineer will research and implement new technologies, contribute to the visual experience, and maintain the codebase across multiple platforms, including mobile devices, ensuring high-quality football match simulations.

Must Have

• Develop, extend, improve, and maintain codebase, workflows, and tools for football match simulation.
• Collaborate with match AI, animation, art, graphics, UI, and tools teams.
• Design and implement complex systems, understanding impact on match engine.
• Analyse, identify, improve, and fix complex issues in match codebase.
• Work across multiple platforms and projects for performance and experience.
• Ensure systems are well-documented, tested, and meet quality expectations.
• Contribute to technical areas like Optimisation, Multithreading, Behaviour Trees, Machine Learning.
• Considerable professional C++ programming experience in video game AI.
• Shipped at least two video game titles.
• Minimum five years of professional experience using C++.
• Experience designing and developing sophisticated video game AI systems.
• Strong mathematical, analytical, and problem-solving skills.
• Good understanding of performance and optimisation.
• Good communication skills.
• Proactive and self-motivated.

Good to Have

• Keen interest and understanding in Football.
• Football Manager fan.
• Experience and understanding of C#, ideally Unity game engine.
• Strong academic background with a 2:1 degree or higher in a relevant technical field.

Perks & Benefits

• Flexible working policy.
• Subsidised mental health, therapy and coaching sessions.
• Contributory Pension Scheme (up to 7% of annual salary).
• Free onsite evening bar in London HQ.
• Well-stocked breakfast bar with cereals, fruits, teas, and coffees.
• Regular events in collaboration with our partnered football clubs.
• Access to our on-site physical and massage therapist services.
• Multiple clubs and societies to join e.g., book club and art workshops.
• Free access to games released under the SEGA Europe umbrella.
• A range of Gym Membership options through our Benefits partners.
• Fully Subsidised Healthcare and Dental Plans.
• Free Travel Insurance for yourself and your family.
• A personalized football shirt upon passing probation.
• London Living Wage employer.
• Low staff turnover rates.
• Won ‘Best Places to Work’ award by Gamesindustry.biz in large company category in 2023.

JOB DESCRIPTION

Team: Match

Reporting into: Lead Engineer (Match AI)

Working Model: Hybrid | Remote by exception

Studio Overview

We are Sports Interactive 🎮

The gaming studio behind: ⚽ Football Manager.

Founded in 1994, Sports Interactive became a wholly owned subsidiary of SEGA Europe in 2006. Based at the Here East technology hub in Stratford, East London, the SI team continues to expand as we bring our titles to an ever-growing audience across an increasing variety of platforms.

To support our growth, we welcome the opportunity to connect with passionate people with the drive to match our ambitions and initiative to realise your individual potential.

Position Overview

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our London based studio to enhance our match engine and help take our football match simulation to the next level. The match engine team are responsible for the technological advancements of our state-of-the-art in-house engine which simulates and visualises football matches.

You will join a passionate and flourishing team who care deeply about the realism and visual quality of the match simulation in our games.

As part of this team, you will be working on our match simulation engine and the supporting systems, which are used across multiple projects and products for producing realistic simulations of football matches. Your focus will be on improving the realism and performance of our match engine by, but not limited to, developing the AI decision making processes and you will be involved with researching and implementing the required technologies to achieve this goal.

You will contribute and maintain the direction and realism of our Match Engine and the visual experiences within the match experience that our users have in our products, and you have input into the team specifically as well as the studio generally with the opportunity to voice your ideas and suggestions.

Our match simulation engine is shared across multiple products and is a critical part of the games we make, and you will consider challenges involving the match experience across several platforms, including on mobile devices.

We are looking for self-motivated people with good communication skills who can complete work independently as well as part of a team.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop, extend, improve, and maintain our code base, workflows, and tools that support our football match simulation.
• Collaborate closely with our match AI, animation, art, graphics, UI and tools teams across the studio to continuously improve the look and feel of our match simulation.
• Design and implement complex systems and understand the impact on the wider match engine and experience.
• Analyse, identify, improve and fix complex issues in our match code base to maintain our deterministic engine.
• Work across multiple platforms and projects to ensure we deliver the best performance and experience to our customer base.
• Work closely with and iterate on our match engine, match features, and internal tools, to continuously improve the look and feel of our match simulation.
• Ensure systems are well-documented, tested, and meet quality expectations.
• Collaborate with internal teams to enhance realism and human-like behaviour. Research, prototype, and implement new simulation technologies to keep our systems at the forefront of innovation.
• Help leads and more senior engineers and managers improve software engineering practices.
• Own areas of the match codebase and maintain them across all supported platforms and drive the direction of them.
• Contribute to technical areas such as Optimisation, Multithreading, Influence Maps, Behaviour Trees, Statistics, Path Finding, Collision Detection, Physics, Machine Learning.

Knowledge, Skills, and Experience

• Keen interest and understanding in Football. Football Manager fan a bonus.
• Strong academic background with a 2:1 degree or higher (or equivalent) in a relevant technical field, such as computer science, software engineering, mathematics or physics.
• Considerable professional C++ programming experience in the field of video game AI, having shipped at least two video game titles.
• Minimum five years of professional experience using C++ as the main language.
• Experience and understanding of C#, ideally Unity game engine
• Experience designing and developing sophisticated video game AI systems (behaviour trees, path finding, machine learning) within the games industry.
• Strong mathematical, analytical, and problem-solving skills.
• A good understanding of performance and optimisation.
• Good communication skills for effective collaboration with software engineers, designers, QA, and production staff.
• Proactive and self-motivated with a drive to improve yourself and others continuously.

Benefits of Working at Sports Interactive:

A flexible working policy to best suit you and your team. 🏠

Subsidised mental health, therapy and coaching sessions are available. 😌

Contributory Pension Scheme (up to 7% of annual salary). 🏦

Free onsite evening bar in the Sports Interactive London HQ. 🍹

A well-stocked breakfast bar with cereals, fruits, teas, and coffees. 🥣

Regular events in collaboration with our partnered football clubs. 🏟️

Access to our on-site physical and massage therapist services. 💆

Multiple clubs and societies to join e.g., book club and art workshops. 🫶

Free access to games released under the SEGA Europe umbrella. 🕹️

A range of Gym Membership options through our Benefits partners. 🏋️

Fully Subsidised Healthcare and Dental Plans. 🦷

Free Travel Insurance for yourself and your family. ✈️

A personalized football shirt upon passing probation. 👕

What is it like to work here?

We approach everything with passion, whether that is making our mark on the gaming and football industries or doing our bit for the world around us. We want to share that outlook with everyone who shows up to work here each day.

For us, talent wins games, but teamwork wins titles. Collaboration is the key to constantly topping our best. We believe everyone matters, no matter which part of the business you are in, so we encourage and support our people in driving your own growth and realising your full potential. But, more than anything else, we are a team. A team with a down-to-earth dynamic, that has a lot of fun doing what we do.

And whether that’s technical tweaks or fine-tuning our creative process, everything is geared at producing the best game possible for our players. To do that, we need to be tenacious and move quickly, and not be afraid of switching things up. It is these principles that have enabled us to produce a game that has defined year after year, and that will continue to push us for many more to come.

Our flexible working culture gives you the opportunity to optimise your workload, with in-office, hybrid, and remote working options dependent on role. So, if you want a work/life balance, we are behind you. Because while we live to create extraordinary games, we know that is not all you have got going on. You can trust that we always keep things in perspective, fostering an environment where work can be more than just a job.

We’re also a London Living Wage employer, boast one of the lowest staff turnover rates in the industry and are proud to have won the ‘Best Places to Work’ award by Gamesindustry.biz in large company category in 2023.

We are proud to be an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from any relevant candidate irrespective of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, religion, or belief.

SI is proudly a Disability Confident Committed employer, and we are dedicated to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible. Our studio has disabled access and facilities but please ensure you advise us if you require any other reasonable adjustments to be made to support you during the recruitment process.

Our Values:

Keep collaborating: Teamwork wins titles - Here, ideas belong to everyone, whatever department you’re part of. Collaboration lets us score more as a team than we could individually.

Be flexible: We think fast and adapt faster. The football and entertainment worlds never stand still, so we keep progressing and switching things up to stay ahead.

Stay Tenacious: We don’t overlook the details. Everything we do is about producing the best game possible, in other words, never settle.

Show Ambition: Let your drive lead the way - Your individual outlook can give everyone the edge. Make the studio’s purpose personal and let your drive lead the way.

Bring the Passion: Have fun doing your thing - Don’t be fooled, what we do is not a game. Making our players’ passion come to life is our passion.

Consider the Bigger Picture: Keep things in perspective - We want our impact to be a positive one. From built-in work/life balance to initiatives covering the most important topics of today, we have what matters in focus.