Senior Tools Engineer (Unannounced Project)

At ArenaNet, we’ve always believed that games are art. They have the power to communicate ideas and tell stories. They can change the way we think, reflect our cultures, and move us. As the developer of the award-winning Guild Wars game series, we’re proud to share our passion for the online worlds we’ve created with over 11 million players worldwide.

ArenaNet develops and publishes games for every kind of person, which means our games need to be built by every kind of person. We believe the best experiences come from working together, celebrating differences, and helping each of our team members shine.

We are looking for a Senior (or higher) Tools Engineer to own and drive tools and workflow development on our team. In this role, you will first and foremost be a guardian of developer workflow for an exciting new game using the Unreal Engine. This includes being ready to drop what you are doing to help any team member in need when it escalates to you to get them back on track. In addition, you will be proactive in seeing workflow issues coming and working to prepare the team to handle them smoothly.

When not responding to the immediate needs of the team, you will take a keen interest in the challenges the team faces in how they work and own collaborating with them to develop and improve their tools, workflows, and processes to make their days productive, efficient, rewarding and ultimately fun!

This role is at a level where you will be expected to mentor and grow less experienced engineers. These teammates are capable of working independently, but at times they will look to you for your technical guidance, advice, and experience. When needed, you will make the call when the team needs to make a decision quickly and move forward.

This role requires excellent communication skills, in all forms, as you will work closely with other teammates across disciplines either collaborating on your efforts or in support of theirs. These often include tech artists, designers, and build/infra engineers, but can span the entire gamut of roles on the team. In this role, you will be an evangelist for good practices across the studio.

If you love working with people and care about their happiness by having a frictionless workflow; if you love building tools to simplify tasks, if you have no tolerance for warnings or errors in the build, editor, or game, and if you find it your life’s mission to help your fellow developers with a smile, this role is for you!

About Our Team
The Engineering team at ArenaNet thrives on a wide array of perspectives, experiences, and interests. We know that the best creations come from healthy and friendly teams. Our work is woven together with the efforts of other disciplines and crafts within game development. We seek out voices and ideas that might be new to us. We are always on the lookout for ways to help each other, both within the Engineering team, and throughout the studio as a whole. 

Who We Are Looking For
You, our ideal candidate, are an experienced tools engineer within the Unreal Engine environment. You are very comfortable writing code in C++ and C#. You enjoy overseeing tools and workflow development using the Unreal Engine for a large team. This includes customizing UGS for the team’s needs, helping the team with validation for pre-flights, creating editor tools with UMG/Slate.

You put your teammates work above all else and will drop everything to make sure anyone on the team who gets stuck is quickly up and running again. While you are expected to meet challenges with a smile, you are also thick skinned and understand that when teammates are frustrated with the tool, that does not mean they are frustrated with you even though it may feel that way. You handle situations with empathy and compassion and work to defuse those frustrations however they may manifest.

You are a strong communicator, both in written communication and face to face. You are friendly and able to communicate with both technical and non-technical teammates in ways that make them feel heard, safe, and comfortable. You write outstanding documentation that teammates can follow to reduce their need to call on you for every issue that arises.

You are a tireless advocate for good practices and can explain that while some processes may seem to slow an individual down, they are necessary to prevent issues that will prevent the whole team from being able to work effectively. You won’t back down when pushed to put the project at risk for short term gains, instead you will work to improve workflows that fit within our safety net.

While not required, there are some additional experiences that will be considered by the team when reviewing your application. These include experience as a build engineer or with build systems, experience with Horde, Robomerge, UMG, and Python.

Don’t meet every single requirement on this job post? Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At ArenaNet, we believe diversity in culture, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and backgrounds make us a better team – we celebrate it. So, if you’re excited about this role, but your experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification listed, we encourage you to apply anyway. You may be just the right candidate for this or other roles.