Game Developer Job Description Template 2026

Last updated: October 10, 2026

By Robert Ardell, Co-Founder and Strategic Advisor, KORE1

A game developer job description should name the discipline, the engine and its version, the platform, the milestone the hire lands into, what counts as a shipped credit, your generative AI policy, and a published pay range. Most postings name the engine. Then they list adjectives.

Here’s one we were handed last spring. Game Developer. Unreal Engine. Five years of experience. Shipped title required. Strong C++. Passion for games. A mid-size studio outside Bellevue, about 140 people, building a third-person co-op game for PC and the current consoles.

It drew 312 applicants in four weeks.

The lead engineer read about sixty of them before giving up. Mobile Unity engineers who had touched Unreal once in school. Technical artists. A very good animation programmer who would have been bored inside a month. Two people who had shipped AAA titles and wanted a principal role the studio couldn’t pay for. What the team actually needed was a gameplay programmer who knew the Gameplay Ability System, could work inside a source build of Unreal 5.4 that the engine team had modified, and would land about six weeks before an alpha milestone the publisher was going to hold them to.

None of that was in the posting. All of it was known.

We rewrote it in an afternoon. Same title, because the studio’s HR system wanted it. Different first paragraph. Forty-one people applied over the next five weeks, the lead read every one, and the hire came out of a studio in Austin that had just cancelled the project she spent three years on. She started at $158,000.

I’m Robert Ardell, one of the co-founders of KORE1, and our game developer staffing desk is where most of these postings end up when they stall. We get paid when a studio hires through us. Read the rest with that in mind.

“Game Developer” Is a Category, Not a Job

The keyword is the problem and also the reason you have to use it. Candidates search “game developer.” Job boards index “game developer.” So the title stays. The first two sentences underneath it have to undo the title.

Six disciplines sit under that one phrase on our desk, and they barely overlap in the people who apply. A posting that doesn’t pick one gets a little of each, which looks like a healthy pipeline right up until the panel interviews start.

Pick one row. If the job genuinely spans two, say which one is 70 percent of the week.

Two of our own guides already make the engine-side version of this argument. The Unreal Engine hiring guide covers the Blueprint versus C++ split and the posting that is really four roles stacked on top of each other, and the Unity developer hiring guide makes the case for one sentence naming platform, genre, and render pipeline. Both hold. This piece starts where they stop, with the five things a game posting still leaves out after it gets the engine right. Hiring on the casino or iGaming side instead of at a studio? Our page on recruiting for game studios and casino platforms covers how those searches differ.

Name the Engine Down to the Version and the Branch

“Unreal” is not a spec. Neither is “Unity.” An engineer reading your posting wants to know which of several quite different jobs sits behind the logo.

On the Unreal side, the question is whether the studio works from a launcher build or a source build, and if it’s source, how far the engine team has diverged from Epic’s branch. An engineer who has spent four years merging upstream changes into a heavily modified 5.x fork has a skill most launcher-only engineers have never needed. That’s a real filter. Write it down. Same with the version itself, because a team still shipping on 4.27 is hiring for a different set of problems than one using Nanite, Lumen, and World Partition in production.

Unity has its own split. Unity 6 or a 2022 LTS release. URP or HDRP. Whether DOTS is actually in the codebase or just in someone’s slide deck. Mention Addressables only if you use them.

Then the third case nobody writes well: the proprietary engine. Plenty of AA and AAA studios still run their own, and the posting usually hides it behind “experience with commercial game engines.” Say it’s in-house. Say what it’s written in and roughly how old it is. Engine programmers who love that kind of work will find you faster, and the ones who would quit over it will skip you, which is the point.

For context on how the market splits, the GDC 2026 State of the Game Industry survey found 42 percent of developers use Unreal as their primary engine against 30 percent for Unity, with Unreal at 59 percent among AA studios and Unity still the majority at older indie studios. Your posting is competing inside one of those pools. Not both.

Say Which Milestone They Land Into

Game development runs on a calendar that every candidate understands and almost no posting mentions.

Preproduction is a different job from production. A hire who lands during preproduction gets to argue about architecture, prototype three versions of the movement system, and throw two of them away. A hire who lands six weeks before alpha gets a task list, a frozen feature set, and a bug count that only goes one direction for a while. Both are fine jobs. They attract different people, and the engineer who wanted the first one will be miserable in the second.

So name it. Preproduction, vertical slice, production, alpha, beta, certification, launch, post-launch live service. Or a port of a shipped game to a new platform, which is its own animal. One line.

And while you’re on the calendar, say something true about overtime.

Candidates are going to ask in the second interview anyway. Most of them have a crunch story, some have several, and the ones with the most options are the ones least willing to guess. A sentence like “our last milestone ran three weeks of extended hours, paid, and we plan for the same around certification” will cost you a few applicants and save you a few resignations. “Fast-paced environment” tells a senior engineer exactly what they were afraid it would.

I’m overstating the risk slightly. Some studios genuinely don’t crunch and should say so plainly, because it’s a recruiting advantage they’re throwing away by being vague about it.

Decide What Counts as a Credit

“Shipped title required” is the most common line in a game posting and, in 2026, the one doing the most accidental damage.

The reason is the layoff cycle. The same GDC survey reported that 28 percent of respondents had been laid off in the past two years, rising to 33 percent in the United States, and half said their current or most recent employer had run layoffs in the previous twelve months. A lot of the engineers who came out of those cuts were working on games that were cancelled before launch. Three years of production work on a title that never shipped. Under a strict reading of your posting, they don’t qualify. The engineer who did eighteen months of bug fixing on a shipped mobile port does.

That’s backwards, and most hiring leads know it once they see it written out.

Shipped experience still matters. It’s the best evidence that someone has finished something, survived the last ten percent, and dealt with real players. Keep it as a signal. Just define it. A posting that says “a shipped title, or a cancelled project that reached at least an alpha build, with a feature you owned that you can walk us through” keeps the bar and stops filtering out the strongest part of the current market. We wrote about where that talent came from in the Epic Games layoffs breakdown and on the platform side in our Roblox layoffs analysis.

NDAs complicate this further. Plenty of candidates can’t name the game they worked on for another year. Say in the posting that you’ll accept a described credit under NDA, and how you’ll verify it, usually a reference from a lead.

Put the Devkit and the Building in Writing

Console work comes with hardware rules that most software jobs don’t have. Development kits are controlled by the platform holder. Some studios can ship them to a remote engineer’s home under an approved security setup. Others can’t, or won’t, and the engineer has to be in a specific building to touch the hardware the job depends on.

That is the remote policy. Not the one HR wrote for the whole company.

Across our game placements the split runs roughly 60/40 remote versus hybrid, and the hybrid ones are almost always about devkits, unannounced IP, or both. The posting should say which platforms the hire will work on, whether they get their own kit, and what that means for where they sit. “Hybrid, three days in our Irvine office, where the PS5 and Xbox Series kits live” answers a question that “flexible work arrangements” leaves open for four interview rounds.

If the job is PC only, say that too. Some strong console engineers are actively looking to get away from cert, and they’ll read it as a perk.

Write Down What You Do With Generative AI

This one is new, and it’s moving fast enough that a posting written a year ago probably says nothing.

The GDC survey found 36 percent of game industry professionals now use generative AI tools at work, and 52 percent think it’s having a negative effect on the industry, up from 30 percent the year before. Among people in game programming, 59 percent held an unfavorable view. That’s your candidate pool. Most of them have an opinion, many of them have a strong one, and none of them can tell your position from a posting that skips it.

You don’t have to have a perfect policy. You have to say what’s true. Engineers may use Copilot or a similar code assistant. Art and writing are made by people. Nothing generated ships in the game without review. Or the opposite, if you’re building AI-assisted content pipelines and want someone excited about that work. The point is that a candidate with a firm view finds out on page one instead of in the final round, when one of your interviewers mentions the tool everyone uses and the room goes quiet.

Print the Range

The Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t track game developers as their own occupation. The closest line is software developers, with a median annual wage of $135,980 in May 2025 and employment for the broader group projected to grow 10 percent from 2025 to 2035, about 106,100 openings a year. Game studios historically paid under that number for the privilege of making games. At the senior end, they don’t get away with it anymore.

On our desk, the bands we quote on the game developer staffing page are the ones we’d put in a posting. Senior game developers run $140K to $190K base in 2026, with Unreal and netcode specialists trending higher and senior Unity slightly lower. Mid-level engineers with 3 to 5 years of shipping experience land in the $115K to $145K range. Staff and Lead game engineers clear $200K, with LA and SF placements often higher. For contract work, senior game engineers typically fall between $90 and $145 an hour. Run your own number through the salary benchmark assistant before you print it, especially if the role sits outside a major metro.

And print it, because in the state with the most game studios you have no choice.

California’s rule is stricter than many hiring teams assume. Under Labor Code section 432.3, as the California Labor Commissioner explains it, an employer with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale in any job posting. The pay scale means a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly range the employer reasonably expects to pay. It has to be in the posting itself. A link or a QR code that leads to the range doesn’t count. If a recruiter or job board publishes the posting for you, you have to give them the range and they have to include it.

That covers the Los Angeles, Irvine, San Francisco Bay Area, and San Diego studio clusters in one sentence, and it’s the first thing our Los Angeles staffing team and Orange County recruiters check on a game req. Washington, Colorado, New York, Illinois, and several other states with real game-industry presence have their own versions. If you post nationally, assume the strictest rule applies and have counsel confirm it.

Something we tell studios on every intake: the band you print is also a filter for seniority. Print $95K to $120K and the principal engineers stop reading, which is correct if you meant it and an expensive mistake if you didn’t.

Game Developer Job Description Template

Copy it, fill the brackets, cut what doesn’t apply. Anything marked “Internal” is a note for the hiring team. Delete it before you post.

Job Title

[Game Developer, Gameplay] or [Senior Game Developer, Netcode] or [Game Developer, Tools and Pipeline]. Internal: if the title has to stay plain “Game Developer,” the discipline goes in the first sentence of the next section.

The Game and Where It Is

[Studio] is building [game, in one plain sentence: genre, perspective, single or multiplayer] for [PC / PlayStation 5 / Xbox Series X|S / Nintendo Switch 2 / iOS and Android]. We’re in [preproduction / vertical slice / production / alpha / beta / certification / live service], and this hire joins [timing, for example about six weeks before our alpha milestone]. [If it’s a port or a live game, say how long it has been out and roughly how many players it has.]

The Engine

[Unreal Engine 5.x, launcher build / Unreal Engine 5.x, source build with our own modifications to (subsystems) / Unity 6 with URP / Unity 2022 LTS with HDRP / our in-house engine, written in (language), in use since (year)]. [Name the frameworks that matter: Gameplay Ability System, DOTS, Mass, your own ECS.] Internal: if you can’t name the version, ask the engine lead before posting.

What You Will Own

[One or two systems, stated as ownership. For example: the ability system and its tooling for designers. Or: matchmaking and the dedicated server build. Or: frame time on the console SKUs.] [Who you’ll work with most: designers, technical artists, the engine team, live-ops.]

Overtime, Honestly

[What the last milestone actually looked like, in weeks. Whether extended hours are paid or comped. What you expect around the next milestone.] Internal: if the honest answer is uncomfortable, fix the schedule or say it anyway. Candidates will ask in round two.

Platforms, Devkits, and Where You Work

[Which platforms you’ll touch. Whether you get your own devkit, share one, or work PC only.] [On-site, hybrid with named days, or remote, and the reason if it’s devkits or unannounced IP.] [City, State.]

How We Use Generative AI

[One or two true sentences. For example: engineers may use code assistants; game art, writing, and voice are made by people; nothing generated ships without review.] Internal: if the studio has no position yet, say it’s being decided and by whom.

What You Bring

• [X or more] years of professional game development in [C++ / C# / your engine’s language], with [the discipline named].
• A shipped title, or a cancelled project that reached at least an alpha build, with a feature you owned and can walk us through. Credits under NDA are fine. We’ll verify through a reference.
• [The one capability the owned system really demands. Shipped a rollback netcode model. Hit a 16.6 ms frame budget on last-generation hardware. Built editor tools a content team used every day.]
• [One more that genuinely predicts success here. Then stop.]

Not Required

[Our exact engine version, our genre, console experience if the role is PC first, a computer science degree, AAA background.] [Name what you’ll teach.] Internal: every line here widens the pool for free.

The Interview Loop

[Number of rounds and roughly how long it takes.] [Whether there’s a technical exercise, how long it should take, and whether it’s paid.] Internal: senior game engineers drop out of unpaid take-homes faster than almost any other group we recruit. For what to ask once they are in the room, use our game developer interview questions.

Pay, Benefits, and Location

Base salary [range]. [Bonus, royalty pool, or equity, if any.] [Benefits summary.] [City, State], [on-site / hybrid with X days / remote]. Internal: California requires the pay scale in the posting itself for employers with 15 or more employees, and several other states have similar rules.

What Leads Ask Before the Req Goes Up

Doesn’t a narrow posting just shrink a pool that’s already tight?

It shrinks the applicant count. The qualified count usually goes up, because the people you want stop assuming the job is for someone else.

The Bellevue posting went from 312 applicants to 41 and from zero hires to one. A lead reading forty-one resumes properly beats a lead skimming sixty out of three hundred and quitting.

We’re still deciding between Unity and Unreal for the next project. What do we post?

Post after you decide. A posting that hedges between engines attracts generalists, and the engine you pick in March will shape every hire you make through launch.

If you truly need someone to help make that call, the role is a technical director or a principal engineer, and it should be written that way.

Our last game was crunch-heavy. Should we really admit that?

Yes, along with what you changed. Candidates already know, because the industry is small and people talk.

The postings that do best here are specific. “Our last launch ran six weeks of overtime. Since then we added a producer, cut scope at alpha, and paid every extended hour.” That reads as a studio that learned something, which is rarer than it should be.

How many years of experience should we ask for?

Three to five for mid-level, six or more for senior, but count completed projects as much as years.

An engineer with four years and two projects that reached alpha has more relevant reps than one with eight years maintaining the same live game. Neither is wrong. They’re different hires, and the years number alone can’t tell you which you’re getting.

We need a netcode engineer for nine months, not forever. Does the posting change?

The ownership section changes. A contract engineer needs to know exactly what they’re expected to leave behind, because the handoff is the deliverable.

We staff that kind of search as contract game developer staffing most of the time, and as contract-to-hire when the studio wants the option to keep the person. Say which one in the posting. Permanent core-team seats are a direct hire search and should read like one.

Is “game developer” even the right title for a gameplay programmer?

For search traffic, often yes. For accuracy, no, which is why the discipline has to appear in the first sentence under the title.

Some studios use “Game Developer, Gameplay” to get both. That works on most job boards and in most applicant tracking systems. Engineers who write C++ or C# for a living often search the language too, which is why a lot of our game candidates come through our C++ developer staffing and C# developer staffing searches before they ever see the word “game.”

The Posting Is the First Design Document

Studios write design documents for everything. Combat. Economy. Onboarding. The job posting is the first one a future teammate ever reads, and most of them are written in about twenty minutes by someone who would rather be doing anything else.

Everything above is already known inside your studio. The engine branch. The milestone date. How the last crunch went. What the leads think about AI tools. Writing it down costs an afternoon.

KORE1 has been recruiting since 2005, our recruiters average more than fifteen years each across 30-plus U.S. metros, and 92 percent of our direct hire placements are still in the seat at twelve months. Most of that comes from getting the posting right before the search starts. If you want someone to read a game developer req before it goes live, talk to a recruiter on our team and bring the draft. The game development search desk will tell you what’s missing.