Senior UX Engineer
Hidden Door
We're looking for an experienced UX engineer to help design, build, and maintain the frontend of our game.
Hidden Door is a game technology studio building the first narrative AI — a platform that transforms any work of fiction into an infinite social roleplaying experience, bringing together players, authors and other creators.
Role overview
We're seeking a Senior UX Engineer to help design, build, and maintain the frontend of our game web app and player experience. Our stack is Typescript and React, communicating with our Python backend services.
Many people can make one piece of a frontend really good. We're looking for someone who can see the whole tapestry and help make it come together — how we want players to feel, the language of components and interactions that help make it happen, and the wise judgment about where to spend your time to get us there. This role might be a good fit for an engineer with a strong background and interest in design, or a designer who loves building delightful working systems.
You'll be joining our small and mighty engineering team! If you're passionate about building creative and principled experiences at the intersection of engineering, the web, narrative gaming, and AI, we want to talk to you 🙂
Things you'll do:
Imagine this: We’re considering a new gameplay mechanic featuring the metaphor of playable cards, and want to explore “shuffling the deck”. You’re able to quickly generate and discuss the tradeoffs for a range of possible concepts, jam with the team on how they could work in the context of the game, prototype and test the best ideas, and take the feature all the way through to a complete implementation.
About you
- Experience with modern UI/UX/motion design patterns and systems, and reasoned opinions about what good looks like.
- Shipped and supported a production web app that relied on a server-authoritative, API-based architecture.
- A background in web, mobile, or social apps for large audiences.
- Taste for when to prioritize speed-of-making and when to slow down for craft of execution.
- Excellent written and verbal communication, with attention to detail.
- Confidence that you work best as part of a collaborative team.
- Built web-native game systems, controls, and interfaces.
- Convictions about and experience with accessibility.
- Experience as a technical bridge for artists, co-creating art pipelines, assets, and animations.
- Passion for telling stories and playing games!
- A portfolio of some of your best work that you can share.
Other things to know
- We're a small, distributed international team with shared core working hours centered around Eastern US Time.
- We love getting together IRL! Our team meets up quarterly, often internationally, for planning and fun. We also regularly gather ~1x/month in NYC for jam sessions on product, game design, marketing, and more. Expect adventure 🚀
- This is a startup! As an early employee, you’ll play a role in shaping the company as well as the product.
- We value curiosity, creativity, and diverse perspectives. Successful teammates here tend to be kind, experienced folks who care deeply about craft but are also highly pragmatic.
- We strongly encourage candidates from under-represented or non-traditional backgrounds to apply.
Benefits
- 🏝️ Unlimited vacation (required minimum: 1 week per quarter)
- 🩺 100% medical, dental, and vision for employees, and family coverage
- 💪🏻 Reproductive and gender-affirming care benefit
- 💵 $1,000 annual home office budget ($2,000 your first year)
- 💜 Work with authors and artists
- 🙈 No NFTs or crypto