How I Got My Dream Job As A Lead Game Programmer

You can’t make fun games without having fun yourself. I’ve spent over five years at Kwalee (my entire career) and after three promotions courtesy of some incredible managers, I wanted to share my experience on LinkedIn. My advice - if you’ve got a dream, go for it. There were hardships that I had to overcome - and I’m proud I stuck it out.

I’ve had the joy of working on games that are incredibly popular, like Jetpack Jump and Bake it, which each have over 40 million downloads. Even though Kwalee has grown, our team spirit is just as powerful as ever. If you’d like to learn more about what it’s like to work in our team here’s a flavour of the culture in our Leamington Spa studio.

What it’s like to be a programmer at Kwalee

Our job is to take a game designer’s vision and get it to actually work in the game engine we use - normally Unity for us as a mobile programming team. So, for example, if they want a dice to roll in a particular way, I’ll write the script to handle the logic. We work alongside artists to make sure a game feels good to play and runs well.

The culture in the team is really fun, with lots of banter, but it’s also very caring and rewarding. Just a safe space - if something goes wrong, we talk about it - if something goes well, we celebrate it. Everyone is super friendly, and that holds out even if there’s a queue for your first morning coffee!

A typical day in my world is to get in, head straight for the coffee machine, then double check any bugs or blockers for the QA team. Check, does anyone need me to do anything to unlock their work? Then the music goes on and the tasklist goes up. We’ll share frequent videos to get quick feedback, while I also bounce between 3-4 projects a day, helping others with requests or general support. We also spend a lot of time investing in shared systems to make our programming more efficient - it all needs to be maintained, updated and fixed regularly.

I’ve worked on some incredible games during my time at Kwalee so far. Jetpack Jump was my first ever proper project. Big Battle 3D was the most fun I ever had - working with animated ragdolls meant complex physics would often go rogue in a hilarious way, often resulting in some very memorable bugs. You'd be knee deep in a sprint and a wild ragdoll just makes you laugh, so sometimes even when things go wrong, it can be a small positive. However, of course, working in mobile means there’s so many games we’ve never released - it’s something you’ve got to get used to. Even if you think it’s good, you’ve got to learn, often let go, and put your all into whatever comes next. At first this wasn’t easy as we all love games and want them all to succeed!

How did I get my job at Kwalee?

Nearly all of us at Kwalee have an unfiltered love of games - it’s part of what makes it such a close-knit environment in our Leamington studio. I’ve had my head set on this career since I was 11 years old. I think compared to most, my entry to video games came late when I was hooked on the Halo series when I was about 9 or 10. I realised at that moment that I not only wanted to play these awesome games, but make some, as well, and thus the seed of a dream career was sown.

Originally, I thought I was going to go into game art as I was always very artistic in my younger years, but I was always drawn to the more tech heavy side of things. Studying Games Design and Programming at the University of Staffordshire was the start I needed. I really enjoyed the art modules, but at uni I discovered I enjoyed making things happen more. It took us several days to create a barrel in high quality, but I could make a duck fly and explode in half the time. Prototyping lets me see the result quickly right in front of me.

Overall, the course was fantastic though - it was geared for indie games with lots of design, programming, C++, 3D and 2D art. It taught me valuable skills like Unity, Unreal and processes like source control. It was a really good starting point for people wanting to get into the industry and I’d recommend it! People were able to move around as well, they started in Game Design and could shift to pure art or programming courses if that’s what they fancied.

Kwalee is my first industry experience. Before I joined I set up an indie project and portfolio piece with a friend, setting up a company called TC Interactive. We made a 2D game with some more complex systems to really push ourselves. We tried to overdo the skills on show to present it in interviews, to pinpoint what we’d worked on. After 3 or 4 months we started to love it, monetised it and that opened avenues for us too. I applied for Kwalee after seeing their early games, got the job, and walked through the doors as excited as you could possibly get.

How I’ve developed my career

My career has developed so much in the last decade - through promotions, my personality and my skills. I started off as a junior in the prototype team, working on Jetpack Jump as one of my first early projects, had a lot of fun and did well.

My tactic for progressing my career is to absorb new responsibilities. First, I started approving smaller workflow elements. Then I made processes easier by using templates to save time with the initial setup of our projects. That helped me become level 2 Game Programmer, before I got a taste for mentorship and management, which helped me get promoted to Senior. Now, handling more peer reviews, code reviews and leading teams on projects I took the Lead role in 2023.

It’s not just my programming skills I have seen improve - I can see the change in myself. In my first week, I brought in cookies with a shy message, now I’m a weird social butterfly! Still the unofficial office baker though.

I’ve become a lot more patient. You have to when you’re dealing with your own bugs because they’ll never get fixed if you’re tunnel visioned and buying yourself a one-way ticket to burnout.?

Listening properly is the number one skill I think everyone should learn. Whether it’s in conversation, in feedback or in a design document. I think it’s helped me become a better manager and develop a stronger connection with those I manage. There’s an open door policy so I’m always comfortable expressing any concerns I have. People listen and work together to resolve issues. I’ve had great mentors - people pushing me to look at things in a different way to help me grow.

I’ve also developed my career through new skills. I’ve improved my knowledge of Unity, learning about content distribution for assets and different ways of programming such as the Unity Data-Oriented Technology Stack (DOTS) system - which was a lot of fun to play around with. I wouldn’t have found the time to learn new things like LiveOps and management skills without Kwalee. We’ve had tutors come in to upskill a bunch of us with Mastered bootcamps and then we can share what we’ve learnt as a community in the office via internal workshops.

How has Kwalee changed? How have I changed?

I’m enjoying life! Kwalee has got much, much bigger, but I still have that same feeling of welcomeness, people have an openness, and with so many new faces, I get to bake a lot more!

My current main focus is, well, to make a hit game! While also keeping our developers happy and having fun with the games we’re making.

I’ve always tried to keep work and personal life separate - but through Kwalee I’ve met a lot of like minded people who have become close friends, throughout the years Kwalee has allowed me to take opportunities that have helped me mature and generally become a better person.

What does the future hold?

Since I was a kid and all through uni, my dream was to become a lead programmer making games and here I am. My advice to you is to learn as much as you can, you can always improve. Also don’t forget to help others along the way, share your knowledge or ideas and if you put a smile on someone's face along the way, what a bonus!!

If the pursuit of a dream is costing you more energy and emotion, compared to what the dream will give you, there’s always options, and you’re younger than you think you are. I had friends at uni aged 50+ trying something new. It’s never too late to experience something new.

At the start of my journey, I was part of the generation where my parents didn’t really think this was a real job. As I talked to them about it and showed them what I did, I eventually helped them understand and they supported me massively. However games have become a thing of norm now, pretty much everyone has played a video game in some capacity. Plus there are more resources than ever available online, looking at portfolios of newer students, they’ve got so much more under their belt. We see fantastic talent come through and it’s an exciting time in the industry.

What would I say to my younger self?

You’re gonna love it. It’s what you hoped for.