Mobile Gaming Recruiting
While mobile gaming has been around since the late 80s, with the advent of handheld devices such as the black-and-white GameBoy, the rise of the smartphone has seen the popularity of mobile gaming go through the stratosphere. Smartphone ownership has skyrocketed mainly due to increasing web access and decreasing costs that have allowed more people to access online services. This, along with improved phone features and better operating systems, has made smartphones more attractive to new users.
Mobile devices are used for communication and often used for leisure. As a result, the increased penetration of smartphones has also created an increased demand for mobile games. As mobile devices have become more affordable and powerful, fueling the rising global smartphone market penetration, mobile gaming applications are becoming more accessible and popular. Most mobile games are designed for smartphones that combine a phone’s features with a PC’s processing capabilities. The vast number of Android and Apple devices flooding the market has converted adults with no previous interest in video games into gamers. The rise in popularity has increased demand for new games and industry jobs.
Mobile Gaming Recruiting FOR JOB SEEKERS
Mobile Gaming Industry
In addition to smartphones, the mobile gaming market consists of games designed for handheld devices such as tablets, pocket PCs, PDAs, smartwatches, and feature phones. Mobile games range from simple two-dimensional games to complex applications that employ three-dimensional and augmented-reality technologies. While many feared a slowdown in the mobile gaming market due to pandemic economic declines, video game recruiting agencies report the mobile gaming market has remained strong.
According to a 2023 report by Business Wire, the mobile gaming market is expected to grow over 15 percent in the next 12 months and be worth more than $200 billion by 2026. The report details the major players working to meet the increased demand, including Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, GungHo Online Entertainment, and Microsoft. A joint study done by data.ai and IDC found that mobile gaming is on pace to capture over 60 percent of the gaming market share. This number was extrapolated from past figures where users downloaded over 40 percent more mobile games per week during the first quarter of 2022 than in 2021, amounting to an astonishing 1.1 billion downloads per week. North America and Western Europe made up half of all mobile gaming spending, and the Asia-Pacific region saw the most significant market share increase for global gaming spending. Lexi Sydow, head of marketing at data.ai, also stated they are seeing greater player diversity across most gaming genres.
Video Game Recruiting for Mobile Gaming
The first thing video game recruiters must consider is if a candidate has the skills needed to be of value to the development of the product. While that may seem obvious, and while mobile video game recruiting has many similarities with general game programming, the mobile sector has its own unique development requirements. As such, the skills of candidates with console and/or PC game programming experience may not necessarily translate to the development of mobile games. Today, video game recruiting agencies for mobile gaming look for candidates who can develop and optimize games on the iOS and Android operating systems and code for utilities unique to mobile devices.
Video game recruiters must build an effective strategy tailored to sourcing and engaging with the best talent. Most game companies are willing to consider talent working for both small and large companies. Game companies must create an interview framework that thoroughly evaluates candidates and helps to determine if the person has the proper skills to be successful.
TOP JOBS for Mobile Gaming
The mobile gaming market is expected to remain the most profitable sector of the gaming industry, showing over $90 billion in sales in 2022, and is estimated to grow to have a $250 billion value by 2030. Many of the openings in mobile gaming are for remote video game jobs.
Principal Software Engineer: $175k to $250k Annually
This role involves leading the design process, overseeing the implementation of new and existing technologies, and collaborating with team members. Qualifications include:
- At least five years of experience as a lead software engineer.
- Have a high proficiency in Unity3D
- Experience overseeing the concept, design, implementation, and execution of game development.
- Design experience with a demonstrated ability to integrate with APIs.
- Ability to mentor team members throughout various project phases.
- Experience setting up test frameworks.
- Possess a proven track record of maintaining schedules and meeting deadlines.
Senior UI/UX Product Designer: $60k to $220k Annually
The user experience and user interface designer requires working on addressing complex user requirements from the initial design process to implementing working prototypes. Qualifications include:
- Being able to create engaging mobile experiences across iOS and Android devices.
- Obtain an understanding of targeted users by examining analytics and conducting other research.
- Collaborate with team members, including engineers and other designers, and integrate feedback to improve project development.
- Have at least three years of experience in UI/UX or as a product designer.
- Possess mobile game design experience, preferably with motion design and animation.
- Ability to meet goals and manage deadlines.
Senior Tools Engineer: $135k to $180k Annually
You’ll help design and implement the infrastructure to make that possible. You’ll work with nearly everyone on the team, from artists to world builders to designers, to understand and accelerate both individual workflows and team collaboration through better tools and architecture. You’ll assemble the right mix of off-the-shelf systems and code you create yourself to help develop our build process, the front- and back-end of our patcher, and our server infrastructure. You’ll be the person who makes it all go.
Requirements
- Prior game development experience in a team production environment
- Ability to communicate very effectively with non-engineers
- Experience with C# or Java programming
- C++ programming experience on Windows or Linux
- Scalable network programming experience
- Ability to proactively find ways to help other people work better
Big Advantages
- Experience with distributed and/or cloud systems
- Experience with both Windows and Linux servers
- Experience writing code for the Perforce API
- Experience with XAML or WPF development
- Knowledge of multiple scripting languages
- Tools development experience
The Little Pluses
- Experience with MongoDB or other document-oriented data stores
- Degree in computer science or a related field
Fullstack Engineer: $120k to $180K Annually
Responsibilities
- Identify issues and create solutions independently, understanding how to complete a task from start to finish
- Participate in brainstorming sessions to design and document features with scalability in mind
- Build backend API and frontend components and pages with strong knowledge of Node JS, Next JS, and SQL.
- Meet with individual team members and the full ITS team weekly to discuss progress and ideas
- Interact with different departments of the company to discover and address problems and needs
Must Haves
- 3+ years of professional programming experience
- Experience building modern REST APIs in Node.js
- Experience with writing Typescript packages
- Experience using modern front-end Javascript frameworks (e.g., React, Next, Hooks)
- Experience designing data structures and querying relational and non-relational database technologies such as Postgresql, Redis, MongoDB, etc.
- Experience with Git version control system
- Thrive in a highly collaborative environment involving cross-functional and multi-disciplinary teams
- Strong initiative to find ways to improve solutions, systems, and processes
- Experience with AWS Services (S3, Elastic Beanstalk, DynamoDB, IAM)
Nice to haves
- Python, Go
- Google Cloud Project, Datadog, Prometheus, Serverless,
- CI/CD, Gitlab, Kubernetes, Terraform
