Senior Engine Programmer

JOB DESCRIPTION: Senior Engine Programmer 

DISCIPLINE: Engineering 

REPORTS TO: Lead Engine Programmer 

The Studio 

Compulsion Games is a proud member of Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios, nestled in the vibrant city of Montreal, Canada. Since our inception in 2009, we’ve been dedicated to crafting extraordinary games that delve into the depths of human experience. Our titles, Contrast, We Happy Few, and South of Midnight, have garnered acclaim and awards for their distinctive art, immersive music, rich world-building, and captivating narratives. 

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. 

Studio Culture 

At Compulsion Games, we champion a human-first culture built on trust, autonomy, harmony, and exceptional craftsmanship. Our team thrives on experimentation and artistic expression, embracing diversity and accessibility as core values. We believe in fostering a close-knit and inclusive environment where creativity flourishes, and every voice is heard. As a studio, we do not want to grow too big, as these values don’t scale well. 

The Role 

We are looking to add a talented, people-focused, Engine Programmer to our human-sized programming team who is eager to support across a wide range of challenges. We expect you to be passionate about most technical topics and always aim to understand how things actually work under the hood before bringing your learnings back to the team. This includes optimization, memory management, platform level APIs, pipeline design, code architecture, etc. You should be ready to take part in large tech decisions and be able to champion your ideas to the rest of the team. Some rendering knowledge or experience is also a nice-to-have. 

True to our core values of trust and autonomy, we won't dictate your mandates but instead will empower you to decide what needs to be done and how to get there. The Lead Engine programmer and Technical Director will be there to help you in this endeavor.  You will be able to directly impact tools, build systems, rendering, physics, gameplay systems, and engine performance, allowing the team to push creative and technical boundaries. 

Role Requirements: 

• You believe that success is a team effort 

• 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 

• Experience with Unreal Engine is preferable, showing that you have strong experience in at least one engine is mandatory 

• A strong passion to always continue learning, and share your knowledge with others 

• Comfortable diving as deep as required to chase down complex, low-level, bugs 

• Staying up to date with advancements in Unreal Engine and real-time rendering 

• Able to contribute to the long-term technical roadmap for the engine team 

• You are ready to be the one telling us what you want to learn next – not the other way around 

• A plus if you are someone that plays games regularly and understands the current performance and quality bar expectations of players 

Skills and Experience 

We would like you to have some experience in the games industry, preferably working on PC and/or Console games, but other relevant experiences will be taken into consideration as well. We expect you to understand the most common technical challenges of a real-time application, as well as the life cycle of a successful project, and how to adapt with your team to each project phase. Regardless of your background, be ready to bring the following: 

• Proficiency in C++ and real-time systems programming 

• Proficiency debugging low-level or platform-specific issues  

• Experience with memory management, multi-threading, and CPU/GPU optimization 

• Ability to tackle optimization issues at project scale 

• Familiarity with build system management and automation systems 

• Ability to maintain and extend Python tools and automated scripts 

• Familiarity with source control systems and branching workflows 

What We Offer 

This is a full‑time position with a competitive salary and comprehensive benefits, including: 

• Full health care coverage for you and your entire “party” (family) 

• RRSP matching 

• Relocation support 

• Mental health and wellbeing resources 

• Microsoft Store discounts 

• 3 weeks of vacation, plus two one‑week studio closures 

• And a variety of additional perks 

Our downtown Montreal studio—steps from Atwater Metro—supports a hybrid or fully remote working setup. 

If you’re excited to join a close‑knit, inclusive, and creative team that genuinely cares about developing one another, we’d love to hear from you.