Job Posting — General Gameplay Programmer
Date posted: July 2026
Pay: £50,000.00 - £70,000.00 per year
Job description: General Programmer
Status: Accepting applications — awaiting seed funding close before formal offers
Company: Vector Studios Limited
Location: United Kingdom
Work arrangement: On-site, full-time
Salary: Competitive (based on experience)
Benefits: On-site parking, company pension, sick pay, team lunch and snack days, travel season ticket loan
Start date: Month 1 of seed funding
About the Role
You will join the core engineering team building a large-scale real-time strategy game. You will work on systems that must remain stable, consistent and fast under heavy load — gameplay systems, networking, tools and engine infrastructure all within one codebase.
This is not:
- Front-end web development or business applications
- Blueprint-only scripting without engine-level understanding
- Lightweight mobile or hyper-casual game development
This is:
- Hardcore systems programming for a large-scale PC game
- Performance-critical code running under heavy load
- Simulation, networking, rendering integration and tools
- Problem-solving at the intersection of mathematics, memory layout and parallel execution
Quality benchmark: You should have shipped at least one title at a recognised studio and be comfortable reading, writing and debugging complex C# or C++ systems. We are looking for engineers who think in terms of throughput, correctness and long-term maintainability.
Relevant reference titles: Supreme Commander, Sins of a Solar Empire, StarCraft, Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program — games where scale, persistence and simulation consistency matter.
Responsibilities
- Implement and maintain core gameplay, simulation and engine systems
- Profile and optimise CPU, memory and network performance
- Collaborate on simulation architecture and replay systems
- Build internal tools for design, content and QA workflows
- Contribute to multiplayer netcode and server infrastructure
- Maintain coding standards, documentation and code review practices
- Solve hard problems involving large datasets, concurrency and numerical precision
Requirements
Essential:
- 5+ years professional programming experience in the games industry
- At least one shipped title from a recognised game studio
- Strong knowledge of C#; C++ experience is a significant plus
- Solid understanding of game engine architecture
- Experience with performance profiling and optimisation
- Strong debugging skills in complex, multi-system codebases
- Understanding of memory management, data-oriented design and threading
- UK-based or willing to relocate
Desirable:
- Experience with Unity or Unreal Engine
- Degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics or related field
- Strong mathematical background, especially linear algebra, geometry and numerical methods
- Experience with consistent simulation, lockstep multiplayer or replay systems
- Graphics programming, rendering pipelines or shader experience
- Networking and multiplayer server experience
- Build systems, CI/CD and tooling experience
- Version control expertise (Git or Perforce)
What to Include in Your Application
- CV with project history and shipped titles
- Portfolio or code samples (GitHub, personal site, or shared repository)
- Brief technical response: describe the most challenging performance or consistency problem you have solved in a shipped game and how you approached it
- Short technical submission: provide pseudocode and a short explanation describing how you would design and implement a major RTS system (for example: unit selection, pathfinding, order queues, fog of war, or resource management). Include your reasoning for the data structures, performance considerations and how the system scales.
- References from previous studios or leads
How to Apply
Email: [email protected]
Subject line: General Programmer — [Your Name]
Note: This position is contingent on the close of our seed funding round. We are interviewing now to ensure a prompt start upon funding confirmation.
Benefits:
- Company pension
- Discounted or free food
- On-site parking
- Sick pay
Pay: £50,000.00-£70,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Company pension
- Discounted or free food
- On-site parking
- Sick pay
Work Location: In person
