Lead Software Engineer - Characters

We're looking for a Lead Characters Engineer to join our team at Hypixel Studios, which collaborates remotely from around the world. Our members range from industry newcomers to experts with 25+ 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.

Join us on our mission to bring players together in an inviting, immersive world where they can make their mark. Hytale empowers creative expression across a spectrum of experiences including sandbox adventure, social play, minigames, and creativity using a suite of powerful and accessible tools.

As a Tech Lead of the Characters Team, you will support your team through a combination of coaching, direction-setting, and hands-on engineering. Your team will design, prototype, and implement the fundamental systems which underpin Hytale’s characters, including AI, customization, and animations. 

Your internal customers are Designers, Tech Designers, and Gameplay Engineers. You will enable them to build top notch experiences for our players. To do so, you will need to anticipate design needs and propose extensible solutions that support their requirements. In turn, you will be a first customer of our game engine, building new systems atop its core capabilities as well as driving improvements to them. 

Who you are:

• You have experience with and a passion for bringing game characters to life with systems such as AI, behavior trees, animation, and highly configurable player look customization.
• You have strong fundamental programming skills and can build highly configurable, data-driven, scalable systems.
• You are a growth-oriented, self-motivated, and autonomous leader
• You enjoy cross-discipline collaboration and mentoring other engineers.
• You are are excited to develop your management craft and capabilities

Some of your role:

• Manage a team of 3-6 engineers through a combination of coaching, direction-setting, and hands-on engineering
• Work closely with Product Owners and Project Managers to prioritize, break down, and select work for your team 
• Work closely with designers and transform their feature requests into flexible systems.
• Architect, prototype, build, and maintain systems in high quality C++.
• Create detailed and highly-accessible documentation for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  
  

Essential Traits: 

• 6+ years of professional programming experience in C++.
• 4+ years working in a game engine (commercial or proprietary).
• 2+ years as a manager, tech-lead, or in a similar leadership role.
• Strong experience with at least one of AI, Animation, Scripting engines, Character Customization (cosmetics, etc), or networked client-server games.

Bonus Traits: 

• Experience working with Agile delivery.
• Experience implementing in ECS systems  or Data-Oriented Development.
• Experience embedding scripting systems in a game engine (e.g., Lua, etc).
• Experience working on voxel world games and/or sandbox games.
• Experience working on Games-as-a-Service (GaaS)

We can offer:

• Competitive salary
• Annual Performance Bonus (APB)
• Quality of Life increases
• Christmas closure
• 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.