Lead Gameplay Programmer

Job Description: Lead Gameplay Programmer  

Department: Programming  

Reporting to: Technical Director  

The Studio  

Compulsion Games is a first-party game studio and subsidiary of Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios, located in Montreal, Canada.   

Founded by industry veterans, we have a human-first culture where we trust and respect each other, with shared love and passion for our craft. Our games have won praise and awards for their art, music, world-building, and engaging narratives. We are devoted to building experiences that feel unique and handcrafted, and our programming team is here to make sure our content creators and designers are as creative as they can be.  

We aim to create characters with compelling, human flaws and narratives that explore heavy themes with care and empathy. Our storytelling typically has a healthy dose of darkness and comedy thrown in for good measure.  

Our Culture  

Compulsion Games is a quality-led studio with a humble team that enjoys experimenting with an artistic approach to making games. We like to hire people who are drawn to our core values of trust, autonomy, harmony and craftsmanship and share our vision of a studio built around them. As a team, we do not want to grow too big to stay true to these values, as they don’t scale well.  

A core part of our hiring process is ensuring new hires are well-aligned in order to build a harmonious team and company. We care deeply about our team and their wellbeing, so you’d be joining a close-knit group who are creative, inclusive and care about developing one another.   

The Need  

We’re looking to add a talented Lead Gameplay Programmer to our human-sized programming community, to support and mentor our gameplay programming team of 6-8 people (3Cs, UI, AI, etc). We need somebody with both good technical and leadership skills. 

The Role  

We are seeking someone who proactively collaborates with art, animation, realization and design teams to develop gameplay features and systems such as player interaction, character behaviors, game elements, 3C, AI or game progression. The role will also involve working on the proof of concepts for technical improvements, debugging and polishing various developed features.   

We’d like you to have some leadership experience in the games industry, preferably working with PC and/or Console Games, but other relevant experiences will be taken into consideration. With this exposure, we expect you to understand the fundamental principles of working in teams as well as the life cycle of a successful project and how to adapt yourself to each phase. True to our core values of trust and autonomy, we will empower you and your team to decide what needs to be done and how to get there. The technical director will be there to help you in this endeavor. 

Specific Role Requirements:  

• You are people-focused individual. As a professional, you deeply care for your colleagues and are always there to support them. 

• You share our vision of leadership at the service of the team. You are here to act as a mentor to the people reporting to you to help them grow. You are also attentive to the team dynamic and will make sure to establish psychological safety inside the group. You believe that success is a team effort. 

• You would manage a reasonably sized team, giving you enough time to take personal ownership of some of the deliverables of the gameplay team. 

• Experience with Unreal Engine is preferable, showing that you have mastered at least one engine is mandatory. You should be a skilled and confident programmer using C++ and have a passion for teaching and sharing your knowledge with others. 

• We hope you are someone who plays games regularly and understands the fundamentals that make Gameplay ‘feel’ good.   

• A desire to learn regardless of your level of seniority and share your expertise with others. You are the one telling us what you will learn next, not the other way around. 

• Excellent communication skills to collaborate effectively with a diverse group of artists, designers, and animators. It is a particularly important part of the job, as decisions are often made organically in our studio. You also need to be a great listener as you will be running regular one-and-one meetings with your team members. 

• We expect high levels of autonomy and proactivity, as it would help you to thrive in our work culture.  

• You would be involved with the technical director in various knowledge sharing inside of the Xbox Game Studios family. 

Whilst we operate a hybrid work environment, our preference is to hire applicants who can spend time in the studio regularly; therefore, we will prioritize applicants local to Montreal and/or within Quebec province.  

Our downtown Montreal location, conveniently situated by the Atwater Metro station, operates on a hybrid setup for employees based in or willing to relocate to the Montreal area.   

If you’re eager to contribute to a team that’s redefining storytelling and world-building in games, we’d love to hear from you.