House of How Games

We believe that a universe without fun would be a pretty dull place to exist… and that games are the best medium in the world to provide that fun. We love games which is why we make games. We make games to be a part of providing that outlet for escape, competition, exploration, social connection and so much more to a global audience of 3B+ players and growing.

We believe in authentic leadership, real conversations, making decisions, learning from mistakes but always continuing to move forward. We don’t want big company politics. We just want to do our best work with good people and have fun doing what we love.

We believe that our team performs best when everyone shows up as their authentic full self and we strive to empower everyone in the studio to be a game-maker. We encourage everyone to have an entrepreneurial mindset and we foster continuous learning and innovation.

In a time of so much industry consolidation, House of How is proud to be fully independent. We are based out of Bothell, Washington with remote game-makers all over the USA. We have a satellite studio in Boden, Sweden and are also now expanding our remote workforce in British Columbia, Canada.

Starting out as colleagues at Microsoft Games, our leads worked with each other for years before setting out on a new adventure together. From humble beginnings, we grew slowly and carefully to ensure we could control our own destiny. We are now at 75+ people and growing rapidly as our industry reputation is bringing more and more projects to the studio. Come join our team and be part of the amazing growth story of House of How Games and help us to entertain the planet!

Job Description

We are seeking a Senior Unity Engineer to join a team of developers in designing, creating, debugging, maintaining and optimizing our games, editors, and other related tools used for game development. You will design and implement systems that match the requirements for our designers and artists and drive quality experiences that make our games great!

You should have a broad knowledge of Unity game engine technologies and tools, a keen ability to create and meet estimates, and a good sense for the tradeoff between performance, flexibility, and ease of implementation.

As a senior engineer, you should also have a track record of coordinating with other disciplines and managing deliverables in coordination with multiple people on your team, creating and following processes and an environment that sets the project up for success.

Project Details

You will join us as a senior engineer on our dark fantasy roguelike deckbuilder game. It’s an IP tie-in with a well-known video game IP in partnership with a major publisher. The game is AA in scope, similar to other games in the genre such as Slay the Spire or Griftlands, with a particular focus on high-quality art and animation. We’re targeting a Steam release in late 2024, with a similarly-scoped project beginning afterwards.

You’ll be supported by our Engineering Director and CTO each with 20+ years of AAA game engineering experience.

Our Design Director for the game has 25 years of game design leadership experience, having shipped over 45 CCG products in creative leadership positions, including the Star Wars CCG, Young Jedi CCG, Star Trek CCG, as well as video games such as Sunset Overdrive, Quantum Break, and Gears of War 3. Our art team has experience with a wide variety of AAA game franchises, including Borderlands, Halo, Doom, and Dead Space.

Responsibilities

• Develop games in Unity and supporting pipelines.
• Participate in all aspects of game development, including planning, design, implementation, documentation, and maintenance.
• Quickly become comfortable working with and contributing to a mature codebase.
• Help structure overall game architecture, plus implement gameplay features, localization, tooling, UI systems, etc., as needed.
• Assist in performance tuning, balancing improvement, automation, and usability.
• Follow coding standards, write clean code with a constant eye on performance.
• Take ownership and be the technical expert of features and systems, driving from prototype to a highly polished production state.
• Practively provide to designers to ensure proposed features fit the game architecture.
• Improve, make suggestions, and raise the bar on any code and processes you work with.
• Create accurate estimates to facilitate predictable development.
• Help identify team technical needs, and participate in the interview process.
• Participate in code reviews.
• Mentor junior programmers.
• Document development processes.
• Produce prototypes of gameplay ideas and features.

Requirements

• 7+ years experience in game development as a software engineer or equivalent, in collaboration with other technical and non-technical disciplines.
• Shipped at least one full AA/AAA game as a developer.
• Exceptional knowledge of Unity and fluency in C#.
• Strong fundamental skills in architecture, development, and debugging.
• Solid understanding of design patterns and data structures.
• Experience and comfort with detailed and accurate project planning.
• Ability to offer mentorship to more junior developers on the team.
• Proficiency in source control systems such as Git or SVN.
• Written and Spoken English Fluency.
• Cleared to work and located in the United States, Canada, or Sweden, or able to work as an international contractor from other locations, preferably in Europe.
• Able to schedule your work day with at least 4 hours overlap with Western USA (more overlap is expected for employees in USA and Canada).

Bonus Qualifications

• Game development experience in Unreal or other engines.
• Proficiency with C/C++, JavaScript, TypeScript, or other development languages.
• Mobile or web development experience.
• Shipped a game on consoles.
• Experience in managing other developers and/or small teams.

Compensation

Although we’re a relatively small-and-growing remote team, we work hard to offer competitive salaries regardless of location, as well as industry-leading healthcare coverage, flexible time-off policy, comprehensive dental/vision/life/AD&D benefits, discretionary bonus opportunities, 401(k) with matching, social clubs, career training events, and much more.

In addition, House of How employees also receive:

• 10 days of accrued paid time-off, increased to 15 days after three years of employment
• 14 paid House of How-observed holidays annually
• 2.5 paid floating holidays annually, prorated in the first year of employment based on start date

The base pay ranges for this role in Washington state, enumerated by rank, are as follows:

Washington State Pay Range

Senior Developer: $90,000—$130,000 USD
Senior Developer II: $120,000—$175,000 USD

These ranges are determined by a multiplicity of competing factors, including work experience, transferable skills, training, business needs, and market demands. In other locations, these pay ranges may be adjusted, and they are subject to change.

---