Tools UI / UX Designer

Cambridge / Hybrid / Remote /
Programming – Coding /
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.  

About the role:

Our Shared Technology Group is primarily responsible for developing and maintaining our in-house engine Cobra. They also serve as a group of domain experts to advise game teams on technical problems, best practice and use of Cobra for their games.

STG Tools are responsible for content creation and editing Tools for the Cobra engine, working closely with programmers and content creators to understand and influence how assets are built, how the runtime game uses them, and what processes are used to create our games.

As part of STG Tools you will extend Cobra with cross project and project specific user interactions and experiences, delivering great workflows for content creators across a varied range of game projects. As a specialist tools UI / UX designer you will focus your efforts on creating engaging interactions, easy to understand and seamless user experiences within our expansive content editing tools.

You will work closely with programmers and content creators on game projects to understand and influence how assets are edited, create and develop UI / UX concepts iterating on your designs and preparing high quality mock-ups that can be engineered by the team. You will contribute directly to Cobra and its supporting pipelines, promote best-use of existing tools for game development, and take our tools and engine to new heights.

Key Responsibilities:

    • Help define the art and design vision for our tools.
    • Create icons and layouts in keeping with an established art style.
    • Champion usability and user-centered design.
    • Keep up to date with the latest designs and trends.
    • Collaborate with developers and content creators to build features from scratch (from wireframe to interactive prototypes and high fidelity mock-ups).
    • Work closely with the team to understand problems and develop solutions that smartly balance technical and user requirements.
    • Create high quality features that can be engineered by the developers.

About You:

    • Have over a year of commercial UI design experience in web, apps, or tools.
    • Passionate about working on tools that will be used by many different developers across a wide range of disciplines.
    • Able to communicate effectively with other developers.
    • Pride yourself on creating graceful, hierarchical UI compositions.
    • Love solving complex problems.
    • Looking for the next step to build your career.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience:

    • Essential:
    • Keen eye for design.
    • Commercial UI design experience.
    • Experience in wireframing, user flows, and interaction design.
    • Excellent UI design skills to make complex problems look easy.
    • Outstanding iconography and composition skills.
    • Experience of working directly with users, from requirements capture through to product support.

    • Desired:
    • Knowledge of WPF / XAML and C# for UI development.
    • Familiarity with contemporary game creation tools and workflows.
    • Familiarity with art content creation packages (i.e. Maya, Photoshop, Substance, ZBrush etc.).
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.