Technical Game Architect

About Atari

Atari is an interactive entertainment company and an iconic gaming industry brand recognized worldwide for its multi-platform games and licensed products. Atari owns and/or manages a portfolio of more than 400 games and franchises, including globally recognized brands such as Asteroids®, Centipede®, Missile Command®, Pong®, and RollerCoaster Tycoon®.

The Atari family of brands includes Digital Eclipse, Nightdive Studios, Infogrames, AtariAge, MobyGames, as well as Coatsink, Early Morning Studios, and Stormteller Games—spanning game development, publishing, and community experiences worldwide.

Atari operates internationally with offices in New York, Paris, Germany, and India.

Overview

The Technical Game Architect is the domain authority on game engine architecture and cross-platform porting - bringing deep, hands-on expertise to evaluate technical outputs, identify gaps, and ensure every port meets the standard required for platform certification and release. This role drives technical excellence across the porting process, working at the intersection of game development expertise and tooling and automation to make cross-platform delivery faster, more reliable, and more efficient.

What You’ll Do

Technical Review and Validation

• Review code changes, configurations, and platform integrations for technical correctness - catching errors, incorrect API usage, missing edge cases, and certification-blocking patterns.
• Evaluate technical outputs against deep knowledge of PC and console game behaviour - identifying structural failures, not just compilation errors.
• Make gate decisions at every major milestone - assessing technical soundness and platform readiness with the authority to stop a port that is not ready.

Domain Expertise and Knowledge Contribution

• Serve as the primary source of porting knowledge - translating hands-on experience into structured patterns, decision rules, error-fix pairs, and platform-specific guidance.
• Diagnose knowledge and process gaps when outputs are consistently incorrect - identify the root cause and provide the expertise to close it.
• Keep domain knowledge current across engine versions, platform SDKs, and certification requirements.
• Document porting patterns, platform behaviours, and certification requirements precisely and unambiguously.

Engineering Team Collaboration

• Work as a continuous partner to the engineering team throughout every port - embedded in the process from scoping through launch, not a downstream reviewer.
• Identify what domain knowledge is needed, in what form, and at what precision - ensuring it is correctly structured and usable before it informs any tooling or automation.
• Jointly diagnose tooling failures with the engineering team - bringing domain expertise to identify what is wrong while the team diagnoses why, closing gaps together.
• Contribute domain expertise to AI-assisted automation tooling - reviewing outputs, identifying systematic errors, and providing structured knowledge that improves accuracy over time.
• Validate engineering fixes - confirming correct technical output before the next port begins.

Platform and Hardware Validation

• Test ports on physical console hardware: verify rendering, input, platform services, suspend and resume, save persistence, and device-specific requirements.
• Validate certification compliance - distinguishing blocking failures from warnings and providing precise guidance on remediation.
• Provide authoritative judgment on controller input and platform-native behaviour.

End-to-End Porting Lifecycle Ownership

• Lead viability assessment: evaluate engine version, codebase structure, dependencies, and platform complexity to determine effort, risk, and feasibility.
• Define the technical porting plan: work sequencing, dependency mapping, risk identification, and system-by-system approach.
• Own the first build milestone: get the game compiling and running on the target platform, resolving the initial failures that block all subsequent work.
• Drive performance and optimisation: identify where the game exceeds console CPU, GPU, and memory constraints and define the approach to hit stable targets.
• Manage certification preparation, submission, and response to platform holder feedback through to approval.
• Communicate with game producers and stakeholders throughout the port - identifying requirements, setting expectations, surfacing what will be handled through tooling and automation, and flagging where decisions or input are needed.
• Coordinate with game producers on launch readiness: release timing, store metadata, platform requirements, and post-launch patch planning.

Requirements & Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on game development experience, with a proven track record of shipping titles across PC and at least one major console platform (Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo Switch).
• Deep expertise in Unity or Unreal Engine: architecture, build pipelines, rendering, input, asset management, and platform-specific configuration.
• Extensive console porting experience across multiple titles and SDK generations - full lifecycle from first build through certification submission.
• Deep working knowledge of at least one console SDK (GDK/GDKX, PlayStation SDK, or Nintendo SDK): platform services, certification requirements, and hardware constraints.
• Strong understanding of where PC and console architectures diverge and where those differences create porting complexity or incompatibility.
• Experience reviewing code for platform correctness - identifying incorrect API usage, missing behaviours, performance issues, and certification failures on sight.
• Ability to rapidly learn and apply new engines, platform SDKs, and tooling - transferring structural porting knowledge to unfamiliar environments independently.
• Clear, precise communication of technical judgments to both engineering teams and non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience with physical console devkit testing: deploying builds, capturing logs, diagnosing failures, and validating platform services on device.

Preferred / Nice-to-Have

• Experience across multiple engine and platform combinations - Unity and Unreal, or Xbox and PlayStation, or console and PC simultaneously.
• Familiarity with tooling and automation in game development workflows - reviewing tool-generated outputs or working alongside automated systems in a technical oversight capacity.
• Experience authoring technical documentation, porting guides, or certification reference materials.

To Apply

Please submit your resume and a brief cover letter outlining your experience and interest in the role. If available, you are also welcome to include a link to your portfolio.

EEO Statement

Atari is an equal opportunity employer and we are committed to providing a workplace free from harassment and discrimination.  We are committed to equal employment regardless of race, religion or lack thereof, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, marital status, medical condition, veteran status, ancestry, disability status, pregnancy, parental status, genetic information, political affiliation, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate.