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Software Engineering Manager

We're looking for an experienced Software Engineering Manager to join our team, which collaborates remotely from around the world. Our members range from industry newcomers to experts with 15+ years of experience. Team members come from a diverse set of backgrounds, but share a common passion for building polished player-focused, community-powered games.

At Hypixel Studios we are looking for applicants that are demonstrably passionate about their hobbies, have the drive and commitment to deliver results with minimal supervision, have international-level professional competency in their skill sets, and can demonstrate involvement with other interesting projects throughout their lives.

As a Software Engineering Manager for Hypixel, you will report to the studio’s Technical Director. You will be a key part of the engineering leadership team, and will have a direct impact on long-term, strategic technical direction. You will collaborate closely with all disciplines including Production, QA, Art, Audio, and Game Design to make far-reaching decisions that serve the whole studio.

At Hypixel, an Engineering Manager is a servant leader, who leverages their experience to organize, motivate, and develop engineers across a broad range of experience and roles: from individual contributors, to developing technical leaders, to engineers just beginning their journey into management. Managers are expected to lead with empathy and organizational acumen, combined with technical ability near that of the senior engineers on their teams. This will mean balancing a “lead by example” approach, as you get your hands dirty in the code, with working through your direct reports and other subject matter experts to scale your impact.

Who you are:

• Player-focused : You understand what players want, and can help your team understand and meet those needs. Your player-focus serves as a common ground for your discussions with Game Design and other disciplines.
• A collaborator: You are passionate about empowering artists and designers to realize their ideas in-game with minimal engineering assistance. You want to work elbow-to-elbow with them to listen to them to understand their needs, and you bring that customer-focus to your team.
• Curious: No one knows everything, so asking insightful questions and listening to the answers will be key to rapidly learning about our technology, our product, and our team.
• Calm under pressure : You exude calm in even the toughest of situations. When things get spicy, you work as a cooler to help the team reach a solution.
• A force multiplier : You understand how to organize a team to operate effectively, remove blockers, and make the most of everyone’s skills and passions. You understand how to empower engineers on your team to learn, grow, and scale.
• Obsessed with improvement: Inefficiency bothers you and you work to create well-oiled processes and systems whenever you can.
• Adaptable: You understand the need for rapid re-prioritization, and are able to build resiliency in yourself and others to meet the challenges such re-prioritization creates.

Some of your role:

• Manage 3 to 10 engineers as direct reports, working across 1 to 3 cross-functional teams
• Foster a healthy engineering culture through developing best practices and modeling servant leadership
• Organize and evolve teams to meet the changing needs of the Studio as the game goes through a full development lifecycle
• Develop roles and expectations for your team members
• Coach and mentor individual contributor engineers, tech leads, and new engineering managers
• Maintain high traction conversation on engineering morale and delivery status through team meetings and one-on-ones
• Provide technical leadership through designs, code, and insightful questions
• Build frameworks to shape technical decision-making such as design processes, architectural direction-setting, and software selection, etc
• Work with producers to develop product plans and roadmaps
• Collaborate closely with designers and artists to understand game system and tools requirements
• Assist senior engineers in turning requirements into systems designs
• Help engineers break down product requirements into manageable tasks, estimate those tasks, prioritize them, and execute them

Essential Traits:

• 3+ years experience managing software development teams.
• 5+ years experience in professional software development as a hands-on developer, with 2+ years working in a game engine
• Experience mentoring team members towards reaching their career goals.
• Strong experience with software development processes (e.g. Agile/Scrum, Kanban/Lean, and Critical Path/Waterfall)
• Object Oriented Development experience, as well as experience with Source Control tools such as Git and Perforce

• Experience with one or more of the following game systems:
  • Networked, multiplayer game engineering
  • Gameplay systems
  • Creating game developer Tools
  • Game asset pipelines and build pipelines
  • Rendering
  • Game AI
  • Game engine architecture
• Professional C++ engineering experience
• Experience across multiple stages of the game development lifecycle (e.g., Prototype, Pre-Production, Production, Live Operations)
• Experience with User Generated Content (UGC)

We can offer:

• A chance to work on a new game project with an extremely motivated team
• Opportunities to learn and grow personally and professionally
• A stable and secure work environment
• The ability to work remotely

We’re looking for applicants who are self-driven, put players first, and that have a history of making cool stuff. In return, we can offer an environment that values and supports individual creativity and passion and believes in fostering new talent. We recognize the value of diversity in every sense and actively encourage candidates from diverse backgrounds to apply.