Responsibilities
At Lively, we pride ourselves on making games full of character. The world is fun and silly and sad and infuriating and banal and beautiful and ugly, and all of those things have a place in our games. Across the Electric Square group, 4 studios, many projects, 250 people (and studio dogs (and cats)), we offer you a comfortable and comforting studio culture that we hope can make you feel empowered and inspired.
Lively hunger for difference — we celebrate it, support it, and thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, products, and community. Lively is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace. We provide a comprehensive benefits package and an award-winning environment to work in; we are not idle - we always strive to do better for our employees.
We are currently looking for a delightful Lead LiveOps Programmer to join our Lively team - but we are fully supportive of remote working and happy to enable whatever blend of home and office best empowers you and your work.
A Lead LiveOps Programmer at Lively:
- Leads code team, passing on experience and expertise and leads by example.
- Architecting complete end-to-end live ops server solutions.
- Implementing and rolling out solutions.
- Develops technical design specifications for complex projects and implements them.
- Designs, develops, writes, tests and implements systems and game code.
- Works with designers, artists and other personnel involved in the development process as required to create the highest possible quality product.
- Mentors and conducts regular one to ones with project engineering team.
- Estimates own tasks and delivers high quality code to that schedule.
- Performs code reviews with the team to ensure code quality.
- Able to communicate effectively with our clients and maintain strong relationships with them
Qualification
- Client and server side development.
- Working in a live ops environment.
- Strong C#/C++ skills.
- Cloud platforms (e.g. AWS, Azure).
- Cloud telemetry and analytics.
- Server technologies experience, e.g. Java, Javascript, Node.js, JUnit, SQL, NoSQL databases (e.g. MongoDB), Security (e.g. oauth).
- At least 5 years experience working in the video games industry.
- Knowledge of industry standard development practices: source control, asset pipelines, issue tracking, external QA and localisation teams.
- Worked on and shipped at least two games.
- Exposure to post-launch on-going product development and delivery.
- Continuous integration and build automation experience.
- Worked in an Agile development environment.
- Unity or Unreal experience.
Please also let us know if you:
- Worked on free to play mobile games.
- Have experience with low level optimisation, networking, shader programming, physics or mathematics.
When you join Lively, you can expect to enjoy a unique culture. Whether it’s participating and relaxing with one of our wellness benefits or discussing the latest games over lunch cooked at one of Leamington Spa’s incredible eateries. The Studio knows that it’s the best people that make the best games and this is what Lively invests in. Below you will find all the benefits and perks you can enjoy as a Lively team member.
- Holidays - 25 days’ annual leave which includes the 3 day studio closure over the Christmas period plus all UK bank holidays.
- Bonus Anniversary Holidays - An additional day of annual leave for each year’s anniversary working at Electric Square, up to a maximum of 30 days of annual leave entitlement.
- Generous Annual Bonus
- Company Pension Scheme – 5% Employer contribution pension scheme provided by NEST under the UK governments automatic enrolment scheme.
- Private Medical Insurance Scheme – Private medical cover provided by BUPA Healthcare.
- Private Dental Insurance Scheme –Private dental cover provided by BUPA Dental.
- Group Income Protection
- Health and Well-being Allowance – £50 per month to spend on your choice of a range of healthy activities, ranging from going to the gym, rock climbing, yoga, arts and crafts or a lovely massage. It's on us!
- Group Life Insurance
- Volunteer Time Off ‘Electric Square in the Community’ – Spend one day per year on full pay volunteering for the non-profit organisation of your choice.
- Tech Scheme - Over 5,000 products available from to buy over 12-month payment terms, saving up to 12% on National Insurance.
- Cycle Scheme – Salary sacrifice cycle purchase scheme with tax savings through Cycle Scheme.
- Free In Studio Monthly Friday Lunch –A wonderful way to catch up with everyone on a Friday over a great studio lunch.
- Eye-care Vouchers – Free eye tests.
- Train Travel Season Ticket Loan – Interest free company loan to spread the cost of an annual season ticket.
- Free Awesome Swag – Sleek Lively T-shirts and merch.
- Exclusive anniversary presents – After your third and fifth year with Lively.
- Social Clubs – There are lots of ways to socialise with your colleagues here! From day one you’re invited to join in clubs for D&D fans, board games, bouldering, drawing nights, yoga, cooking club – the list goes on and there is always space open for new members!
- Our Studio in the Leamington Spa – Our Lively Leamington Studio is based on a fantastic regency street centrally located close to Jephson and Pump Room gardens.
- Financial Coaching and Wellbeing Platform – Access to your own fantastic financial coach and financial wellbeing platform which is free to all Electric Square Employees.
- WithU Fitness App - A remarkable fitness app that revolves around audio guidance, which is absolutely free for all Electric Square employees
- Dogs with Jobs – Lively is a dog friendly employer. Bring doggo into the studio to meet and hang out with the rest of the team any time!
- Project Wrap Parties, Cinema Nights & Team Nights Out – We work hard together so it’s good to let off steam and spend some time together seeing what our wonderful locations have to offer.
- Summer Party – Every year on a hot summer’s afternoon, we all leave work early to enjoy the sun with summer games and activities, good food and a wide selection of drinks to help us cool down. Bring a +1 to spread the fun!
- Exhibitions & Days Out – If there is an event happening of interest to us, we’ll happily spread the word, pick up the bill and see if any Electrons are up for going – we’re keen to get everyone out seeing what’s going on.
- Self-Development Time – Our Self-Development Policy allows you a dedicated half-day every month to engage in self-directed training and development activities. During this time, you can utilise company provided resources and explore independent learning opportunities to enhance your skills and knowledge.
- Matched Giving programme – Should you donate or raise sponsorship for charities, we will donate too!