UI Programmer Technical Lead - UI Programmer

Job Description

The Senior UI Programmer – Technical Lead serves as the primary technical point of contact for all user interface systems on the project.

This person serves as the bridge between engineering, UI integration, and art, ensuring that every UI element is delivered with the level of polish, performance, and accessibility expected of a AAA first-person shooter.

What You’ll Do

Technical Leadership

• Serve as the go-to expert for all user interface technologies in the project: the Snowdrop UI framework, game-specific UI systems, and tools
• Manage the UI technical roadmap: architecture decisions, framework upgrades, and deprecations
• Define and enforce UI coding standards, component templates, and integration workflows
• Identify and resolve bottlenecks that hinder the work of UI integrators and technical artists

Team Supervision

• Supervise a team of UI integrators and technical artists working in the UI Graph editor
• Review and validate work for accuracy, performance, and adherence to design intent
• Mentor team members, conduct code and asset reviews, and provide clear, actionable feedback
• Collaborate with UX/UI designers to ensure that the technical implementation aligns with the design intent

Engineering

• Implement and maintain UI features across gameplay, menus, HUD, and frontend
• Author and extend UI scripting in the visual graph language (UI Graph); support team members using it
• Design reusable, scalable UI components following componentization principles — maintainability and reuse over one-offs
• Implement adaptive layouts that handle multiple target devices, screen sizes, and resolutions
• Integrate accessibility requirements (text scaling, colorblind modes, controller navigation, screen reader support)

Performance & Stability

• Profile UI rendering and logic; identify and resolve underperforming areas (overdraw, excessive draw calls, expensive graph evaluations)
• Own and triage UI-originating crashes; lead post-mortems and drive fixes to completion
• Establish and monitor UI performance budgets in collaboration with the engine team

Design Partnership

• Apply and advocate for core design principles throughout technical decisions: consistency, simplicity, and clear user feedback
• Challenge implementations that compromise usability, even when technically correct

Qualifications

What you'll bring to the team

Must Have

• Shipped 2+ AAA titles with substantial UI programming ownership
• Deep experience with a visual/node-based UI scripting system (UI Graph or equivalent)
• Demonstrated ability to profile and optimize UI in a real-time engine
• Experience debugging and resolving crashes in a production game
• Track record supervising or mentoring UI Integrators or junior programmers
• Solid grasp of UI architecture: component hierarchies, data binding, state management

Strong Assets

• Familiarity with responsive/adaptive UI design for multi-platform titles

What Success Looks Like
Six months in, this person has become the go-to for any UI tech question on the project, the team is unblocked and producing quality work, and the UI systems are stable, performant, and easy to extend.

Additional Information