Entry Level Indie Animation Studio Jobs in Texas

Job Title: Gameplay Engineer (Full-Time)
Location: Remote, work from home in the US or UK only
Position Type: Full-time (40 hours)

Uplift Games is the studio behind Adopt Me, the premiere pet adoption game on Roblox (43B+ sessions, 1.94 million record CCU). We’re looking for a talented and driven Gameplay Engineer to join our studio. As part of our tight knit cross-disciplinary team, you will write high quality code for our flagship game.

At Uplift Games, Gameplay Engineers are at the heart of our mission to “Create Future Nostalgia” - not just as technical experts, but also as creatives. Your ideas matter here. As you transform features from rough ideas into polished products, you will apply your critical design eye and excellent UX intuition. As the central integrator for the work of your cross-disciplinary peers, you are the owner of key initiatives, engaging with all aspects of game development.

This is an opportunity to create an outsized impact on many millions of players while operating in a small studio where every person plays a major role. It’s important that you take pride in your work, love to learn new things, and are naturally driven to deliver the best-in-class experiences.

You value diversity and want to work alongside talented people from marginalized groups. We are explicitly a trans, LGBTQ+, BIPOC / BAME and disability positive team.

This is a remote position open to candidates who are based in the US or UK and can demonstrate eligibility to work in those countries.

• Write clean, performant Lua/Luau code for gameplay features, UI, VFX, and content updates.
• Own features end-to-end: concept, implementation, polish, testing, and deployment to millions of players.
• Craft gameplay that feels great. Responsive controls, polished and effective feedback, intuitive UX. As a gameplay engineer your ability to deliver a satisfying player experience is crucial.
• Be a creative generalist. You'll work across code, particles, asset integration, UI layout, camera work, and more. We value breadth. Being excited about learning and working with new systems is excellent. Specializing in one or two deep areas is an added bonus.
• Collaborate with your cross-disciplinary peers (artists, QA testers, producers, game designers). Communicate clearly and empathetically both synchronously and asynchronously.
• Participate in the design process. Brainstorm, pitch ideas, and help shape what we build. Engineers here have a real voice in game design.
• Be a team player: help teammates solve problems, give and receive thoughtful code reviews, document features, fix bugs, and clean up old code.
• Work with producers to scope your work, assess risk, set goals, and ensure timely delivery.
• Review your own work critically before marking it complete. Thoroughly test throughout development and take pride in shipping with minimal bugs.

These are the things candidates really should have but can make up for in other areas. If you're missing one or two, consider applying anyway, especially if you belong to a marginalized group.

• 1+ years of professional or significant independent game development experience.
• Roblox/Luau experience, or traditional game development experience with hands-on work in areas like character controllers, camera systems, creature behavior, motion/animation, or VFX.
• A portfolio or shipped work that demonstrates your game feel and creative skills. We want to see what you've built. Please highlight your specific contributions.
• Creativity and a good eye for design. You notice when something doesn't feel right and you fix it.
• Comfortable reading and navigating a large existing codebase. You can orient yourself in unfamiliar code and build on top of it.
• Comfortable working across disciplines. You're happy jumping from code to particles to UI layout.
• Strong problem solving skills and a proactive self-starter attitude.
• Good written and verbal communication in English.
• Passion for playing and making games.
• You value diversity and want to work alongside talented people from marginalised groups. We are explicitly a trans, LGBTQ+, BIPOC / BAME and disability positive team.

These are things that can improve your candidacy, but none of these are necessary to apply.

• A game or experience you designed and built yourself (indie game, Roblox experience, game jam entry, etc).
• Extra bonus if you have released and maintained a Roblox experience.
• Understanding of the Roblox community and Roblox player motivations.
• Experience working in self-managed roles and remote teams.
• Awareness of client-server security in multiplayer games.
• Experience with REST APIs and modern UI frameworks in Roblox (e.g. React-Lua).

When possible, we provide transparent estimated salary ranges to set expectations early and to respect your time.

We recognize, however, that salaries vary within our various remote geographical locations. To give an indication of the salary level for this role, we estimate the annual salary will be as follows for these example locations:

Our compensation package is intended to be competitive with your local market and is negotiable.

In addition to salary, you will receive a signing bonus, along with a generously sized cash bonus package (4-year vested RSU-style cash bonus). You'll also be eligible for our studio-wide annual bonus scheme.

We also offer a competitive benefits package for our employees.

A few reminders: you must be over 18 to apply. Though this is a remote role, you must reside in and have permission to work in either the US or UK to apply.