Senior Design Technologist - Games Technology Research Group

Netflix is one of the world's leading entertainment services, with 283 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, films and games across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can play, pause and resume watching as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, and can change their plans at any time.

The Technology Research Group is on a mission to delight members by empowering Netflix’s internal teams to do the best work of their lives by researching and prototyping new technologies that unleash Netflix’s unique superpowers and technologies into new and novel directions previously unthought of.

As the Technology Research Group Senior Design Technologist, you will identify and propose solutions for a diverse set of challenges across the company and act as a cross-functional bridge within Games Experience Engineering and outside stakeholders and partners.  At times, you will drive design implementation for new prototypes using experimental tech stacks, including actively scripting (throw-away prototype code). In other cases, you give the appropriate support, collaboration, ideation, and feedback to the designated design leader of a project so they can communicate the value-add to leadership.

Responsibilities

• Be a part of Technology Research Group staff to help shape organizational, partner, and technical strategy.

• Design and create prototypes that serve as a proof of concept for technical research. These prototypes need to be the communication piece that explains the member’s user experience interfacing with the experimental tech stack.

• Invent new UX paradigms that will help drive innovation across the organization.

• Partner with Product, XD, Internal Games, External Games, and Games Experience Engineering to advocate for significant technical design investments that will set us up for success for years to come.

• Dive deep and understand problems across the significant investments within Netflix Games, from the internal studios, transmedia, external studios, product, and engineering teams.

• Product-minded IC that ensures technical design direction is compatible with product and content direction and vice versa.

• Collaborate with ICs in other organizations (Content, Transmedia, Product, XD, Data & Insights, Internal Game Studios) to advocate for holistic solutions to balance Gaming and Netflix concerns.

Qualifications

The ideal candidate is a “key-shaped” designer-engineer hybrid with the demonstrated ability to go broad and deep into multiple design and technical domains to help engineering teams connect the dots and do their best work.

You may be a good match for this role if you;

• At least 10 years of game development experience with projects shipped utilizing R&D outcomes.

• Convey complex design concepts to stakeholders, driving conversations and decisions through written and/or verbal communication.

• Can work with senior leadership to develop a long-term technical strategy and map business goals to appropriate design investments.

• Have a proven track record in designing, building, and operating experimental systems that highlight and communicate the cool factor of sometimes esoteric technical stacks.

• Experience working with cloud gaming platforms and WebRTC technologies.

• Comfortable working in Unreal Engine, Unity3D, & Defold game engines. Preferably with shipped commercial projects.

• Comfortable working across multiple gaming platforms, including web, mobile, and console. Bonus points if you have experience working with custom hardware experiences. 

• Deep experience working in prototype hardware environments, including controllers and nonstandard controller UX.

• You have deep technical art skills, visual effects, UI, UX, (C#, JS, UE C++.Blueprints).    

• Are comfortable with ambiguous and fast-paced technical environments that require prototyping, experimenting, and iterating (including throwing away code) to get to product market fit.

• Can rapidly design, document, and implement new UI/UX schemas.

• You are deeply technical with success in setting the design direction for engineering projects, making strategic design decisions, and influencing cross-functional teams. 

• Are strongly motivated to learn new domains and expand your current scope.

• Are curious about discovering innovative ways to solve problems.

• Are self-driven and highly motivated to deliver critical-tiered solutions.

• Are passionate about guiding, managing, and mentoring stunning colleagues.

Our compensation structure consists solely of an annual salary; we do not have bonuses. You choose each year how much of your compensation you want in salary versus stock options. To determine your personal top-of-market compensation, we rely on market indicators and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience to determine your compensation in the market range. The range for this role is $100,000 - $720,000.

Inclusion is a Netflix value and we strive to host a meaningful interview experience for all candidates. If you want an accommodation/adjustment for a disability or any other reason during the hiring process, please send a request to your recruiting partner.

We are an equal-opportunity employer and celebrate diversity, recognizing that diversity builds stronger teams. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.

Job is open for no less than 7 days and will be removed when the position is filled.