Senior Game Server Developer
Cambridge / Hybrid / Remote /
Programming – Online /
Permanent
/ Hybrid
Frontier is an established, market leading independent developer and publisher of videogames for PC and consoles. We have achieved serial successes across a wide variety of titles including Elite Dangerous, Planet Coaster, Jurassic World Evolution, Planet Zoo and F1 Manager. Founded in 1994, we are based in the world-leading technology cluster and historic city of Cambridge, England. With a growing team of over 800 talented people supporting our existing portfolio and ambitious future roadmap, along with our publishing label Frontier Foundry, we are passionate about creating innovative genre-leading games and authentic worlds for our communities of players.
Frontier is looking for exceptional server engineers that are confident programming and developing infrastructure to join our team in Cambridge, UK to take part in the on-going and ever growing server-side development on game titles such as Elite Dangerous.
You will be working in an enthusiastic, agile environment and will develop and expand your skills and abilities by working alongside a team of skilled and highly experienced developers.
The role is an exciting opportunity to play a key role in designing and developing the online elements of upcoming Frontier titles across a variety of genres. Prior experience in the games industry is not required, but it helps to have an insight into the online components of games.
Responsibilities:
- Develop high performance, high availability online services for a varied portfolio of new cross-platform high profile Frontier game titles.
- Build and automate the management of software systems and database structures on public cloud services.
- Help the team monitor the live server systems and assist with incident response during normal working hours and occasionally during evenings and weekends.
- Create data and infrastructure tools that allow non-technical users to manage online services.
- Manage online elements of existing Frontier titles, optimising server/game performance and participating in incident response.
- Share knowledge and good practice with the wider online team, supporting team members across different games and services
About you:
- Have an understanding of how server systems can be effectively distributed
- Have a curious outlook, with an aptitude for learning and enjoying variety
- Communicate effectively with team members when working on game features in collaboration with other disciplines
Qualifications, Skills and Experience:
- Degree qualified in a relevant discipline e.g. Computer Science, Math's or Engineering.
- Experience developing server-based systems.
- Experience of object-oriented programming in a dynamically typed script-based language, such as Python, PHP, Javascript or Ruby.
- Aptitude for administering open source infrastructure components such as databases, firewalls, load balancers and networks.
- Excellent communication and documentation skills.
Any one or two of these areas are desirable:
- Process automation and general Devops
- Linux systems administration
- Networking (TCP/UDP, Routing, NAT, Firewalls)
- Tools for managing data changes and for testing & deploying code
- Programming in C++, C#, Java, Go or Rust
- Distributed database architectures
- Building gaming, e-commerce, social networking or search systems
- NoSQL databases such as DynamoDB, Redis or MongoDB
- Relational databases such as MySQL or SQL Server.
- Developing systems on Amazon Web Services or other cloud infrastructures
- Performance & reliability optimisation of distributed systems
- Web programming (HTML, CSS, Client-side JavaScript)
- Maths (Stats or Mechanics), simulation or scientific programming
- Team or project management
What we can offer you
We offer the chance to work with talented and passionate people, developing and publishing sophisticated and enduring games in a creative and collaborative environment. We love what we do, and we work hard to provide outstanding experiences for our player communities. Frontier rewards this passion and determination by sharing in the company’s success and by supporting our teams to keep doing what they love.
Well-being is a big focus at Frontier and we are continually evolving how we can support our staff. We encourage a healthy work/life balance and host a range of well-being activities, initiatives and sessions to support both mental and physical health.
We offer a competitive salary and benefits package, which includes a success-based annual bonus, share option schemes, pension, life assurance, private family healthcare, flexitime working hours, enhanced maternity/paternity package, in-house subsidised catering, support with relocation, a Cycle to Work scheme and free bike servicing, and social events.
We welcome and encourage applications from qualified candidates regardless of sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, religion or belief.
