Tools Programmer - Developer Services

IO Interactive is seeking a passionate and dedicated Senior Tools Programmer to join our Backbone team and help evolve the technology that powers our games. As part of the team behind our proprietary Glacier engine, you will play a direct role in shaping the resource pipeline - the backbone of how assets flow from creation to playable content - used daily by designers, artists, sound designers, producers, and other content creators across multiple studios.

What makes this role genuinely exciting is that every system you work on is a custom implementation. There is no off-the-shelf middleware to work around: you have full access to optimise and tweak every aspect of the pipeline. That means we are looking for someone who can hold the whole picture in mind - understanding not just their slice of the system, but how each subsystem connects to and affects the larger whole.

This position is ideal for someone who is deeply invested in the inner workings of complex systems: someone who finds purpose in maximising the throughput of a build pipeline, who is driven by untangling bottlenecks, and who is committed to the reliability of the systems others depend on to do their best work.

What You Will Do

• Design and implement improvements to our resource pipeline, with a focus on maximising throughput, reducing build times, and delivering a reliable, predictable experience for content creators across our studios.
• Improve request prioritisation and pipeline reliability through robust job scheduling, error detection, and recovery mechanisms.
• Analyse and resolve bottlenecks using profiling, optimisation, and parallel programming techniques, ensuring the pipeline makes effective use of modern hardware.
• Maintain and evolve the data storage and caching layers of the pipeline, including dependency tracking, hashing strategies, and database-backed build state management.
  
  

Who you are

• Strong knowledge of C++ and C# with solid code design principles, and the ability to reason about computational complexity, parallel programming models, and performance-sensitive systems.
• Experienced with profiling and optimisation at a systems level, with a solid understanding of databases and storage systems.
• Comfortable holding a systems-level view: you think about how subsystems interact and can identify where changes in one area will ripple through others.
• Comfortable collaborating across disciplines, whether that means working closely with engineers to review a concurrency design or sitting down with end users to understand what is truly slowing them down.
• Able to break down and estimate your own tasks, and contribute constructively when assessing the work of others.
• Strong communication skills and a collaborative mindset; you thrive in a team where ideas flow freely between design, development, and production.
• A Bachelor's in Computer Science or equivalent is required; a Master's degree is an advantage.
  
  

Who we are:

IO Interactive is an independent videogame development and publishing company with studios in Copenhagen, Malmö, Barcelona, Istanbul and Brighton. As the creative force behind some of the most talked-about multiplatform video games in the last decade, we are committed to creating unforgettable characters and experiences – all powered by our award-winning, proprietary Glacier technology.

IOI is a studio that values in-person collaboration. Being together helps us focus our collective energy on our immediate goals. For us, being both in-office as well as connected across our studios helps us integrate our teams faster, strengthen relationships, and improve knowledge-sharing. We believe that the more time we spend together, the more quality and progress we achieve for our games and players.

We know that to achieve those goals, we need courage, talented people and a great working environment – and we do our utmost to have all of that. Across our multiple studios, we’re working on several projects. Crucially though, we’re all one team. We value the work and impact that each person brings to the table and we actively encourage new ideas, whilst listening to your insights along the way.

We have a dedicated team of People Managers, who look after you as an individual and as an employee. With more than 40 nationalities, we know that everyone is different and we are proud to have a reputation for being a friendly workplace with highly-talent people.

Learn more about our Glacier engine.