Cross-Platform Gameplay Programmer

Blind Squirrel Games; Auckland; On-site; NZD 90,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

Blind Squirrel Games in Auckland, New Zealand is seeking Generalist Programmers to build, maintain, and optimize high‑quality, cross‑platform game systems across ports, co‑development, and full game development.

You will work with engineering leadership and a multidisciplinary team to deliver gameplay, engine integration, physics, animation, AI, rendering, and multiplayer features, while mentoring colleagues and guiding technical decisions as you grow.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience.
• 3+ years professional programming experience in the games industry; five or more years is expected for senior roles.
• Proficient in C/C++ with high-performance, maintainable code.
• Solid understanding of data structures, memory management and multithreading.
• Experience shipping games; candidates considered for more senior-level responsibilities are expected to be credited as a programmer on at least two AAA titles.
• Knowledge of engines (Unreal, Unity, Godot) and cross-platform development.

Responsibilities

• Create high-performance, cross‑platform code.
• Design, implement, maintain, and extend game systems, features, tools, and engine integrations.
• Evaluate existing technology architectures and contribute improvements that support ongoing development.
• Extend existing systems to meet the long-term needs of projects.
• Collaborate with engineering, design, art, animation, production, and QA to translate requirements into practical technical solutions.
• Support porting efforts by adapting systems to platform requirements, hardware capabilities, and resource constraints.
• Develop and optimize data structures and algorithms for game objects, scenes, and other systems.
• Apply linear algebra and trigonometry to functionality such as collision detection, camera movement, projectile trajectories, and spatial transformations.
• Contribute to physics, animation, AI, rendering, and multiplayer systems as required by the project.
• Implement animation functionality such as blending, state machines, inverse kinematics, and procedural techniques.
• Support client-server communication, game state synchronization, network prediction, and latency compensation.
• Develop or optimize rendering pipelines, shaders, and post-processing effects.
• Use debugging tools, crash reports, and core dumps to diagnose runtime errors, memory issues, and stability problems.
• Profile and optimize CPU, GPU, memory usage, frame rates, and load times.
• Develop and improve asset pipelines, development tools, and automation.
• Work with external development partners to integrate contributions and resolve technical dependencies.
• Participate in code reviews and adhere to team coding standards and practices.
• Document systems and technical decisions to support collaboration and maintainability.
• Communicate progress, estimates, dependencies, and risks to your manager and project team.
• Contribute to architectural decisions, share technical knowledge, and mentor colleagues as appropriate to your experience.
• Perform other relevant duties and responsibilities that support company, department, and project objectives.

Skills

C/C++

Game programming

Debugging & profiling

Performance optimization

Cross-platform development

Problem solving

Team collaboration

Education

Bachelor in Computer Science

Tools

Unreal Engine

Unity

Godot

DirectX/Vulkan

PIX/RenderDoc

Job description

Blind Squirrel Games in Auckland, New Zealand is seeking Generalist Programmers to build, maintain, and optimize high‑quality, cross‑platform game systems across ports, co‑development, and full game development.

You will work with engineering leadership and a multidisciplinary team to deliver gameplay, engine integration, physics, animation, AI, rendering, and multiplayer features, while mentoring colleagues and guiding technical decisions as you grow.