Location
Central London (Remote working, open to candidates within the UK & Europe)

Hours
Full Time - 12-month contract

Salary
Competitive salary (details not specified)

About the Role
We are Panic Stations, a new remote games studio focused on building games that bring people together. We believe games with the highest fun per minute have the greatest chance of success. As a start-up, we are scrappy but resourceful, highly collaborative, and outcome-focused, prioritizing shipping builds over process and meetings. We hire multi-talented individuals who operate autonomously and at speed, with every role being hands-on and directly involved in game development.

We are seeking a Senior Gameplay Engineer to build fun and vibrant physics-oriented co-op games. The ideal candidate will have strong technical foundations and experience, working confidently and independently while knowing when to engage key stakeholders for early feedback.

Key Responsibilities:
1 - Gameplay mechanics: Collaborate with designers to create great-feeling player actions, object interactions, and gameplay systems. Deliver features swiftly for fast feedback and iteration. Build and iterate on realtime, action- and character-oriented gameplay mechanics including character, camera, control, and gameplay abilities. Work comfortably with physics systems to create fun, satisfying, and clear gameplay experiences.
2 - Multiplayer networking: Understand the relationship between gameplay and networking to ensure mechanics perform well and feel good under real-world network conditions. Develop gameplay as online-first, accounting for local client prediction and technical considerations such as bandwidth usage and latency.
3 - Self-driven and versatile: Work closely with designers, artists, and engineers to initiate feature development and jump into coding. Operate effectively with minimal design documentation, relying on strong first principles and good instincts. Know when to escalate key decisions. Be empowered to contribute wherever necessary, including supporting artists with VFX and character animations, assisting level designers, and diagnosing and fixing game and build pipeline issues.

Success in this role means turning high-level ideas into implementations, focusing on delivery by getting work into the build promptly, knowing when work is "done enough," and preventing development drift by taking action when clarity or progress is at risk.

Experience
- Minimum 4 years of game development experience
- Proven track record shipping realtime networked multiplayer games
- Demonstrated experience working on action-oriented, character-based gameplay
- Strong proficiency in Unity and C# development
- Experience working on a team using Git
- Comfortable working in a small, fast-moving team environment

About you
You are a self-motivated and versatile engineer who thrives in a collaborative start-up environment. You have strong technical foundations and excellent instincts for game feel and player expectations. You communicate effectively with cross-disciplinary teams and know when to seek feedback or escalate decisions. You are comfortable working remotely and managing your own priorities to deliver high-quality gameplay features efficiently.

Qualifications
No formal qualifications are specified; however, relevant experience and a strong portfolio of shipped multiplayer games are essential.