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Lead Online Programmer - Permanent

OVERVIEW

At PlayStation London Studio, we are on a mission to make award-winning, landmark games. Our upcoming PlayStation 5 online multiplayer game will be focused on a brand-new IP we are extraordinarily excited about.

Our new game is close to our hearts, as the whole team collaborated on coming up with the concept from the very beginning. We’ve seen this idea grow from a seed, and now we’re looking for new starters to continue our journey on shaping our plans for this AAA project.

We’re also a part of the PlayStation Studios family, a collective of teams - from Insomniac to Naughty Dog and many more. As such, we have solid support system – often knowledge sharing industry advancements so that all our studios, individually lead the way to create memorable gaming experiences.

As the Lead Online Programmer, you will work together with multiple disciplines within our proprietary engine and game teams, to lead the development of the online features required for our next big title. These features could include networked physics and animation systems, game logic, matchmaking and session management, among others.

Scope of Work

• Help build a strong online team that will deliver the vision for the studio’s projects.
• Lead, support and mentor the team to deliver high-quality code and solutions.
• Schedule, prioritise tasks, recruit, and mentor junior staff.
• Define the technical direction and develop innovative solutions for difficult online problems.
• Work closely with other teams to integrate online with other systems, like physics or gameplay.
• Help mentor junior members in the team and communicate clearly with other team members with minimal external help.
• Connect with external companies and contractors with assistance.
• You will be vigilant for and resolve new problems, delays and risks to the delivery of the team's objectives.

Experience / Knowledge

• You have outstanding communication skills and comfortable working across teams and mentoring staff.
• You are capable of reading and quickly understanding complex code.
• You are able to plan the work for the team including external dependencies with minimal input.
• You have experience leading a team of programmers.
• You are self-motivated and driven to creatively solve problems.
• You have robust software engineering and software architecture principles. A solid understanding of game architecture, which will include developing reusable software libraries. Experience in working with and interfacing to a large codebase.
• Knowledge of real-time client/server code, with an awareness of HTTP client and web services

Desirable Experience

• Excellent C++ programming and debugging skills
• Video game programming experience for online systems, including having shipped at least one AAA PC/console title at Senior/Lead level from concept to delivery

Impact

You'll be responsible for one of the core systems in our engine and as such your work will have a huge impact on the whole game and team. The ambition behind this title will be driven by the capabilities of our network layer and this role gives you the opportunity to not only bring that ambition to life, but also challenge the expectations of our Design and Gameplay teams into something that really stands out as a next gen PlayStation Studios game.

Supervision

In this role we expect you to build and lead a team, so we need someone who is a self-starter and a great teammate. We are hoping you are the type of Manager who leads, constantly wants to improve, and can empower and steer a team.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

We encourage you to bring your best-unaltered self to work. Inclusivity is one of our studio values, which means we embrace different perspectives to fuel our creativity and we know that our games are stronger for it!

It is important to us that our teams are passionate about diversity and inclusion. They must understand that these words speak to people’s lived experiences that may differ to their own. We encourage our teams to educate themselves and show support and their commitment to DE&I (diversity, equity, and inclusion). As an example, some of our outreach activities include giving talks, mentoring, speaking at schools, running roundtables and much more.

We therefore welcome applications from all groups who are underrepresented in the games industry. We can offer training to upskill our team, so if you don’t feel you meet 100% of the job criteria, we still strongly encourage you to apply and look forward to hearing from you.

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Our roles can be flexible in terms of work location in the UK. We will consider the individual’s preference for hybrid, remote or onsite working. Unfortunately we are not in a position to accommodate remote working outside of the UK.

However, if you wish to relocate to the UK and require sponsorship, we can support you with the visa process.

We have so many benefits, and we felt that if we listed them all out here it might look like we are bragging! What we can say is that we have you covered, from health and wellbeing, to finance and personal development, there is something there for everyone! If you would like to know more head to our benefits and perks page!