Senior Gameplay Programmer

Senior Gameplay Programmer - Berlin or Helsinki

We are Neon Koi. We are a PlayStation Studio. Our mission is to make mobile action games with epic stories that foster lasting connections with players around the world. Our aim is to amass a stellar portfolio over the next decade by focusing on building highly collaborative, experienced and empowered teams in Helsinki & Berlin.

We offer you the chance to join a rapidly growing international team of passionate and talented game makers, just like yourself. As a young company, you, as an early employee, will have a genuine opportunity to contribute significantly to the culture and operations.
 
Neon Koi is formerly known as Savage Game Studios.

Why do our people love it here? 

Our team can be summed up as being hungry, humble, and people-smart. We genuinely love what we do and aim high. To succeed as a diverse international team spread across two locations (Helsinki & Berlin), effective collaboration and communication are key. While we are all talented individuals, the sweetest achievement is succeeding together as a team.

Fair Play - To us, fairness stands for treating people justly, and not letting your personal feelings bias your decisions about them. We strive to preserve a culture, which doesn’t have glass ceilings or hidden decision-making processes. A transparent culture where teams can thrive and get rewarded for the work they put in and the results they achieve.

When people don’t play by the rules, we act swiftly. At the same time, we reward individuals and teams who embrace our values.

Powerful Together - We believe that excellence is reached by effective team collaboration anondayd ongoing, open feedback.

We are constantly curious to learn from each other. Understanding and hearing each others’ perspectives enables us to make the best decisions. We get inspired by each other to strive for higher standards and ultimately become a better version of ourselves.

You can rely on each other when facing difficult challenges. We encourage everyone to speak up, ask for help and bring up hard conversations. Most importantly, we put a lot of effort into hiring the right people who enjoy spending time with each other.

Players First - We work for the players. Understanding them at deeper levels than just demographics is crucial for our success.
We’re player informed. Ultimately we, and not our players, are responsible for making the right decisions for our games. We realize that what players want and what they need may often differ.

We’re committed to creating a diverse team. If you feel that you might be interested in the role, even if you don’t hit 100% of the criteria, please don’t let that put you off. Get in touch with us. We believe in passion and potential. 

The Role

We’re looking for a Senior Gameplay Programmer to join our engineering team to help us build metagame systems. You will provide technical expertise, and make significant contributions to our engineering team, technical strategy, tools, and game architecture. You will collaborate with the design and art crafts to help build solid foundations for mobile action games. 

As a significant part of our team, you’ll also have features/systems of your own and will contribute to the project directly as an individual contributor. This position reports to an engineering team Lead Programmer.

This role can be based in Berlin or Helsinki.

As part of the responsibilities for this role, you will:

• Collaborate directly with designers and fellow programmers to scope and implement mechanics and features supporting metagame systems
• Actively participate in the rapid prototyping of gameplay systems and provide valuable technical insight to the planned features
• Follow best practices and technical solutions with regards to coding standards, maintainability/scalability, design patterns, and contribute with the core tech team on proposing improvements
• Troubleshoot and test in collaboration with the QA team
• Report current status, risks, and task updates to the team and production to ensure project transparency as well as review requirements, estimate tasks, create additional tasks required to deliver your work
• Identify and escalate issues and risks, including impacts to the deadline, ambiguity in requirements, or strategy
• Build systems that scale across a wide range of mobile hardware, and validate runtime performance through analysis and optimization (both code and data)
• Own and improve the tools and workflow strategy to increase developer efficiency and autonomy
• Understand and validate the game design documents for features related to your work including the technical viability

Required Skills

• 8+ years of Experience in a relevant programming role
• Experience with at least one shipped mobile or console game developed on Unreal Engine 4 or 5
• Demonstrated expertise in C++ and C#
• Strong understanding of best coding practices and algorithms
• Aptitude for understanding complex problems and high-level product requirements 
• Continued interest in keeping up-to-date with the latest gameplay programming skills and technologies

Why join us? 

Although we’re a new company, we’re committed to making this a great place to work, so this is only the beginning of our benefits: 

• Annual bonus 
• Lunch benefits
• Budget towards commuting costs 
• Fitness benefits
• Home internet / mobile phone plan
• Educational budget: for language learning, self-training, attending conferences, buying games and books etc 
• Financial and practical assistance with relocation through our relocation partner and a relocation budget 
• Twice yearly off-sites
• PBG - Pizza, beer and games on the last Friday of every month 
• 30 days holiday plus additional days for Wellness and between Christmas and New Year
• Access to PlayStation products and games