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Senior Technical 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 BAME, LGBQT+, women, people with physical disabilities, neurodiversity or mental health issues, and parents or carers.

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 Technical Sound Designer to join the team. We welcome applicants ranging from mid to senior level of experience.

As a technical sound designer, you identify new opportunities for audio systems, while you optimise and refine current audio pipelines. You are capable to author content just like a traditional sound designer, though your focus and heart are primarily in the systemic realm. You establish best practices for technical audio workflows, mentoring sound designers where needed, and work closely with audio coders to help specify, create and troubleshoot features and tools. You prototype & develop audio systems in UE4’s Blueprint and/or audio scripting languages such as Max/MSP, and ensure sound meets technical requirements of the game, including voice channel limits, memory management and prioritisation.

We are open to receiving applications from both mid and senior levels, meaning 2+ or 5+ years in a technical sound designer position, or relevant experience as a sound designer. We are looking for authoritative knowledge of Wwise middleware, and fluency in UE4 Blueprint or a similar visual scripting game development environment. As you will be filling a unique role in the team, you need to be especially self-organised, though of course you will receive support from the audio lead and production. While it won’t be the focus of this role, you should have demonstrable sound design skills.

As we are Reaper users, there’s an opportunity to augment our content authoring and implementation workflows through Reascript. And if you have experience in programming, e.g. in C or C++, 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.