Lead Programmer in Royal Leamington Spa

Secret Mode is looking to recruit a Lead Programmer to lead projects and manage programmers. From assigning tasks to writing code, and from mentoring junior coders to checking on the wellbeing of your team to meeting with clients, a Lead Programmer will have the opportunity to look after code and people as they work with a range of highly regarded IPs and external partners on many different platforms. This is a lead level role, with a strong expectation of many years of experience within the games industry specifically. In addition to managing your team and project, and writing code, you will be expected to be hands‑on with mentoring, setting technical direction, aiding your team in finding solutions to problems, and working with clients and other departments on a day‑to‑day basis.

Experience of leading teams is essential, as you will need to be versed in shepherding multiple projects to completion by working with a producer while you keep track of your team's progress. You will be relied upon to be pro‑active in looking for technical and managerial solutions to potential problems with code and people before they cause lasting issues. You will need to be self‑motivated and capable of working without direct supervision, but you will be expected to feedback periodically to the Technical Director.

Role Overview - key responsibilities

• Write high quality code that can be delivered on time
• Work on a wide variety of projects and tasks in various engines and languages
• Mentor and develop more junior members of the team
• Lead a programming team by planning and directing your own work and the work of your team
• Liaise with other disciplines and teams within the studio and external partners to facilitate development
• Ensure that build pipelines are in place to deliver regular, testable builds
• Interview candidates for programming roles within the studio
• Report to the Technical Director and assist in drawing up policy and best practices
• Adhere to and enforce programming best practices and standards.

Skills and experience you need

• Has successfully led on the technical direction of games projects
• Experience of leading and mentoring teams of programmers
• Multiple years of experience working in games in a senior capacity, working with colleagues and stakeholders across departments
• Excellent knowledge of C++ and C#
• Experience shipping games using both Unity and Unreal Engine, as well as bespoke C++ engines.
• Industry experience of working with other languages like Java and Objective-C, or scripting languages like Lua or Python
• A working understanding of different consoles and/or game streaming platforms, in addition to PC development
• Expert in Perforce and Git/GitHub, including defining branch and release strategies.
• Solid understanding of CI/CD pipelines using TeamCity or similar.
• Experience of writing technical documentation, to document investigations, approaches, and features

Skills and experience it would be great to have

• An understanding of working with the command line
• Be able to demonstrate a history of working with clients directly to ascertain their needs
• Experience of implementing automation for building projects and code
• Shipped titles on mobile
• Experience with web technologies for tooling, including Node.JS, React, MongoDB, and Grafana.

Travel Requirements

This role requires you to be in our Leamington Spa studio for two days a week and may involve occasional travel to events. Please note that this role is only open to applicants who have the right to work in the UK. We are currently unable to offer sponsorship or consider applications from outside the UK.

Benefits

Flexitime working hours, Pension Scheme, Benefits platform with company funded allowance which includes: Income Protection and Life cover, Private Healthcare coverage, Critical Illness, Online GP.