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Technical Designer
3 years ago
Creative Assembly is looking for a Technical Designer to join our Total War development team. This role is based in our studio in the heart of Sussex, in the UK.
As a Technical Designer you will be supporting the programming and design teams in creating systems, pipelines, and tools for creating our award-winning games. You will be involved in a wide variety of tasks, like creating and maintaining scripting codebases, fixing code bugs, designing, and prototyping complex new game systems, and creating custom tools and pipelines.
At Creative Assembly we are passionate about developing our employees. A strong drive to develop and learn will aid you greatly, both in the application process and during your time here at Creative Assembly. As a Technical Designer you will be exposed to a large range of areas, including many scripting and programming languages, tools & UX development, teamwork & production process, conceptual design as well as technical & system design, live operations, rapid prototyping, and many others. The experience you gain at Creative Assembly will be very valuable to you in your career. Pairing this experience with your desire to learn will enable you to get the most out of these opportunities. Alongside your technical contributions, you will have a voice in creative discussions, to contribute to the overall success of our projects.
Key Responsibilities
As Technical Designer on the project, your skills and knowledge will be important for considering long term goals of the game technology, game features, game content, production and design pipelines, and general design, as well as short term issues like feature changes and re-purposing. You will ensure you contribute to high quality feature development that provides long term value to Total War.
On a day to day basis, you will:
- Be involved at all stages of the development process, from concepting to production
- Consistent communication ties with the Technical Design team as a whole to co-ordinate and share technology, tools, and expertise including coaching the use of new features
- Bridging communication between disciplines, projects, and games teams
- Help update and support already released games; making good use of your design and technical skills combined
- Create and maintain robust script architectures
- Collecting design requirements from the design team and translating these into long-term sustainable feature and technology designs
- Building tools and pipelines to streamline content development & implementation
- Inform and advising on technical limitations and their impacts on development, and providing alternatives and fallbacks
- Constantly monitoring design implementation processes and searching for opportunities to improve or streamline
- Pushing the boundaries of existing technology to provide further value to players.
Strong communication skills will work to your advantage in this role, as you'll be proactively communicating demands and requirements of new feature development with team members and groups from almost every other discipline (artists, programmers, designers, etc.) in the course of your work. Naturally, this will also take advantage of your teamwork skills, working with a variety of people to problem solve in a helpful and productive way.Knowledge, Skill and Experience
Essential
- Familiar with programming and programming principles
- Experience with one or multiple programming or scripting languages
- Strong knowledge of game design fundamentals
- Excellent problem-solving skills
- Affinity for communication, both written and verbal
- Comfortable working closely with other disciplines, especially programmers
- Comfortable working in, and rapidly becoming familiar with, unfamiliar systems
- Experience with source control
- A strong desire to seek out and learn new skills and knowledge
Desirable
- Experience working on live products
- Previous Technical Design role in game development environment
- Experience with Lua, C#, or C++
Creative Assembly is about the right people making the best games. We are united through our values; Quality, Focus, Teamwork, Respect and Trust.
Winner of multiple Best Place to Work Awards, we house many talented people, from trainees to industry veterans who constantly challenge us and make sure we are striving for the best within our games and our studio life.
We have studio sites in Horsham UK and Sofia Bulgaria, including a number of bespoke state-of-the-art audio suites and a dedicated motion capture site.
Currently we are working fully remotely, and we continue to assess the COVID-19 situation with the safety of our staff our number one priority. We are still actively recruiting and onboarding new staff each week. Our expert IT and HR teams will set you up with everything you need to join remotely whether you will need to relocate to the UK (or within the UK) now, or at a later date.
We offer many benefits to support you and your family including:
- Bespoke and funded relocation package for you and your dependents, with support throughout the process from our dedicated Relocation Specialist
- Enhanced maternity and paternity, private medical and dental insurance, life insurance, permanent health insurance, critical illness cover and free health care screening
- Generous holiday allowance plus full studio closure over the Christmas and New Year period, as all UK Bank holidays
- Annual discretionary studio bonus
- Join our award-winning education and social responsibility programme; the Legacy Project, as an industry ambassador to mentor and educate others
- Defined career development pathways and personalised training support including; SEGA Dev Day, internal masterclasses, prestigious creative workshops, on-site training with renowned specialists and global conference attendance
- Season ticket travel loans and cycle to work scheme with free bike servicing and discounted car valet service on site
- Free games and merchandise plus access to our extensive games library
- Free breakfast every day - toast, bagels, pancakes, cereals, yoghurts, fresh fruit, smoothies, juices, milkshakes and more in our fully stocked kitchen*
- Wellbeing support with an employee assistance programme and onsite confidential sessions
- In-studio heavily subsidised massage therapy*
- Discounts for home technology, travel insurance, corporate gym membership, cinema tickets, holidays, trips out and Ikea vouchers, and many local businesses including estate agents
- Studio parties for you and your family; such as our Summer Festival, Christmas Party plus a separate Children’s Christmas Party. We also have Cinema days and wrap parties for game releases*
- Studio community activities such as free Japanese lessons, life drawing, creative writing, Pilates, Walking Challenges, Couch to 5k, basketball, game and movie evenings, board game club, 5-a-side football, CA Choir, Sword fighting (yes, sword fighting) and loads more*
*some of the above in-studio benefits are on hold while we work remotely during COVID-19. Our studio sites have disabled access. We are an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from suitably qualified and eligible candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, religion or belief.
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