Please read the entire job description before applying
Jackbox is a medium-sized game studio (~60 people) best known for the Jackbox Party Pack franchise: a set of five social party games released every fall. Since 2014, our games--like Quiplash, Drawful, and Trivia Murder Party-- have been featured on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, by Polygon, and in living rooms and finished basements across the world.
Over the last few years, we have had over hundreds of millions of users. And we have hard evidence that one of those users was Academy Award-winner Charlize Theron.
You can learn everything you ever wanted to know about how our games work (spoiler: your phone is the controller!) and what we make at jackboxgames.com.
Who we are:
We challenge ourselves to be the best, but work hard to retain a relaxed, casual environment. Our games really do reflect who we are as a studio. We love to learn, socialize, play, and talk tech. We believe in owning the code we work on, frequent releases, and pushing forward with as few hurdles as possible. We build our engineering process around this belief, and always look for ways to do better.
Who you are:
You take pride in your work, helping others learn and you look for the same from everyone on your team. Your experiences show an eye for detail and a desire to talk about that new thing you learned or skill you acquired. You’re always looking for the next challenge or problem to solve.
You feel passionate about pushing good code to create a great product and want to work with others who feel the same.
The role:
As the go-to party game franchise, we want to make it easier for players to access our games across multiple platforms whether they get to party together or remotely. This role will be pivotal in making that happen. We have a vision and a plan, but need talented engineers to help us execute it. As a greenfield project, this role and team are unencumbered by what we have and will be focused on where we’re going.
This role can also provide an opportunity for leadership and/or people management in the future for an interested candidate, but is not an expectation of the position.
What you’ll do:
You’ll be part of the team focused on building our user identity and content management systems, game play interactions, along with metrics and insights, and more.
Day-to-day:
- Software development in Go and Javascript
- Build, develop, and deploy new features and new products.
- Contribute to and help evolve our tech stack to solve data-intensive problems
- Work with product designers to bring new ideas and features to life
- Deliver projects using technical leadership and your ability to drive consensus within and across teams
- Collaborate with peers through PR review processes and agile ceremonies
Your experience:
This is what we look for from your experience.
- 4+ years experience developing consumer-facing web applications or services
- Programming fluency in javascript and/or Go
- Web framework experience in a full-stack web development environment
- Understanding of web technologies (HTTP, WSS, CDNs, etc)
- Hands on experience with relational databases and their use in CRUD applications
- Passion for building things customers use, and being involved in improving how we work
- Experience in designing user acquisition and onboarding flows–especially with an eye toward User Experience and Interactions
We don’t expect these, but they’re nice to have.
- Strong Linux experience
- Experience with WebRTC or other web based multimedia protocols
- Familiarity with user based metrics collection and analysis
- Understanding of data security and privacy best practices
Our tech stack:
Under the hood, you’ll likely see:
- Backend: Go 1.17+, Redis, PostgreSQL
- Front End: Vue 2x/3x, Vite, Webpack, and Marionette
- Testing: Jest and opportunities for more
- Infrastructure: AWS, EC2, ELB, NGINX , and plenty of room for growth
- Tooling: Github, Github Actions, Slack, Atlassian
We only hire clever, kind and creative people who are willing to work hard. That said, we do not have a crunch-time culture and have shipped games for many years without expecting extended-hours from our employees. Jackbox Games is a group effort and you must work collaboratively. Everyone here shares a commitment to excellence and a desire to work in a comfortable, friendly atmosphere.
Jackbox Games is committed to providing employment opportunities without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, ancestry, age, veteran status, or disability.
Are there any perks?
- Competitive pay and benefits. 401(k) with matching. And we pay 100% of the cost of premiums for medical, dental, vision, disability and life insurance for our employees. We also cover a really nice chunk of the cost of premiums for spouse/partner/dependent medical, dental and vision insurance. Paid parental leave.
- Flexible vacation and time off policy. Take time off when you need it to recharge, take a trip, or just catch up on life.
- Casual dress and a flexible schedule. Come in a sweatshirt, jeans, whatever, like everyone else here.
- Creative work environment. We are lucky to work in a place that is full of talented and innovative folks. Although most hours the place is pretty quiet (we’re a focused bunch), this is punctuated with hilarious outbursts and general merriment, which makes a nice way to spend the day.
- Easy transportation. We’re very close to the “L” and the Halsted (#8) bus (right by the Apple Store and Mega Whole Foods if that’s your kind of thing), and we have a transit FSA that allows you to dedicate pre-tax dollars to public transportation expenses.
- Free food. Every week, we stock our kitchen with free snacks.
Interested?
Great, we look forward to reading your application. Make sure you include:
- Your resume.
- A cover letter. You don't need to be a professional writer for this job (we have those) but communication is important so we weigh cover letters heavily. You can (and should) write more, but we won’t evaluate applicants that don’t at least answer these two questions:
- Why are you interested in working at Jackbox Games?
- What is your favorite game and why? There's no right answer and liking games isn’t required for the job. We mostly just want to know if you've read this far.
On the fence? If you're interested in the job but worried you aren't qualified, we encourage you to err on the side of applying. We'd hate to miss out on great candidates just because they're worried they don't check every box on the job description.
We know it is a time commitment to prepare an application and we respect that effort by thoughtfully reviewing every complete application and responding one way or the other. But that kind of thoughtful review means that it sometimes takes us a while to get back to applicants, so please be patient with us and no phone calls.
Thanks for your interest in Jackbox Games!