Description
The Senior UI Programmer – Technical Lead serves as the primary technical point of contact for all user interface systems on the project.
Technical Leadership
- Serve as the go-to expert for all user interface technologies in the project: the Snowdrop UI framework, game-specific UI systems, and tools.
- Manage the UI technical roadmap: architecture decisions, framework upgrades, and deprecations.
- Define and enforce UI coding standards, component templates, and integration workflows.
- Identify and resolve bottlenecks that hinder the work of UI integrators and technical artists.
Team Supervision
- Supervise a team of UI integrators and technical artists working in the UI Graph editor.
- Review and validate work for accuracy, performance, and adherence to design intent.
- Mentor team members, conduct code and asset reviews, and provide clear, actionable feedback.
- Collaborate with UX/UI designers to ensure that the technical implementation aligns with the design intent.
Engineering
- Implement and maintain UI features across gameplay, menus, HUD, and frontend.
- Author and extend UI scripting in the visual graph language (UI Graph); support team members using it.
- Design reusable, scalable UI components following componentization principles , maintainability and reuse over one-offs.
- Implement adaptive layouts that handle multiple target devices, screen sizes, and resolutions.
- Integrate accessibility requirements (text scaling, colorblind modes, controller navigation, screen reader support).
Performance & Stability
- Profile UI rendering and logic; identify and resolve underperforming areas (overdraw, excessive draw calls, expensive graph evaluations).
- Own and triage UI-originating crashes; lead post-mortems and drive fixes to completion.
- Establish and monitor UI performance budgets in collaboration with the engine team.
Design Partnership
- Apply and advocate for core design principles throughout technical decisions: consistency, simplicity, and clear user feedback.
- Challenge implementations that compromise usability, even when technically correct.
Qualifications
Must Have
- Shipped 2+ AAA titles with substantial UI programming ownership.
- Deep experience with a visual/node-based UI scripting system (UI Graph or equivalent).
- Demonstrated ability to profile and optimize UI in a real-time engine.
- Experience debugging and resolving crashes in a production game.
- Track record supervising or mentoring UI Integrators or junior programmers.
- Solid grasp of UI architecture: component hierarchies, data binding, state management.
Strong Assets
- Familiarity with responsive/adaptive UI design for multi-platform titles.
What Success Looks Like
Six months in, this person has become the go-to for any UI tech question on the project, the team is unblocked and producing quality work, and the UI systems are stable, performant, and easy to extend.