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Senior Sound Designer

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 and GI Biz 2020 Best Places to Work; big things are on the horizon and we want you to be part of our continued journey. Join us!

The Chinese Room is made up of a diverse mix of fantastic people, although sometimes, some groups are still under-represented. We are working to remove obstacles that can make it difficult for those groups to progress their careers in the games industry. We welcome applications from under-represented people in the gaming industry, including, but not limited to women, BAME, older people and those from working-class backgrounds.

As a studio we develop our own original games, as well as ‘TCR’ takes on select IP. Current projects are first-person action-adventure games for console and PC, and we’re looking for a world-class Senior Sound Designer to join the team.

As a Senior Sound Designer, you will carry a broad range of responsibilities. Reporting to the audio lead, you will have a big hand in defining and executing the audio direction for the project, both creatively and technically, while establishing good workflow practices and prototyping audio systems in Unreal Engine’s Blueprint. You will work across many aspects of the game’s audio, collaborating closely with design, art and code teams, while simultaneously ensuring you get to play to your strengths and focus on what excites you most. This could include, but not be limited to, combat, traversal, cutscenes, dialogue systems or music implementation. Besides being a hands-on creative, you will also assist in Lead responsibilities such as scheduling and R&D into new features.

We will need you to have extensive game audio experience, ideally having done full cycles on at least three shipped console/PC titles. You have advanced working knowledge of Wwise, and are adept at Blueprint or similar visual scripting languages. You are a skilled sound recordist (both in the studio and in the field) and apply creative, inventive use of sound libraries and audio design tools. You enjoy mentoring more junior team members, and generally have an open attitude towards sharing techniques and best practices amongst the wider team.

Very importantly, you can demonstrate a real knack for top class sound design. Besides high production values, we are looking for individuality in your thinking and hearing, and the way you apply this through your work – while simultaneously being able to always do what is best for the project.

We are Reaper users, so it will help if you are already thoroughly familiar with the deep level of customisation this DAW affords. If you are experienced in running dialogue sessions, that would be considered a bonus.

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) the open-world adventure Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (2015), a PlayStation 4 exclusive that won major awards across the world, and the multi award-winning Little Orpheus (2020). 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 in the city centre, near the beach, and close to 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.