Top Benefits
About the role
Who you are
- We are only considering students who will be enrolled in an accredited degree program in the fall of 2025
- You are a tech generalist, a full stack engineer with the desire to work on both client and server side implementations of entire features
- Strong understanding of object-oriented design, data structures and algorithms
- You communicate your thoughts and ideas clearly in code and in writing
- You have an interest in and play mobile gaming products
What the job involves
- As a Software Development Engineer Co-op, you will be helping build our live mobile games, including but not limited to Single City, Kingdoms of Heckfire, and Party in my Dorm, as well as the tools and infrastructure needed to run these massively multiplayer online experiences
- You will work closely with artists and designers to help grow our games
- You will implement scalable, reliable, and maintainable technologies for both client and server
- You will have a major impact on the end product, and will be involved in every aspect of its development. Millions of people will use what you create
- You will be responsible for implementing features, systems, and tools for our games in live operation
- The game backends are built with a Django + MySQL server architecture, while the frontend clients are built using Unity or native iOS/Android, depending on the product
- Build entire features from front-end client code to back-end server support
- Become involved in every aspect of product development, from design to implementation to playtests to metrics analysis
- Construct systems that let everyone at the company deploy to our distributed backend without worry
- Create tools to automate and optimize processes across disciplines. These might be adding additional player management tools for our community team, data pipeline optimizations for our game designers, or even content pipelines for our art team
- Past co-ops have worked on:
- Guild management improvements like the ability to invite people, open clubs that players can join without approval, better club search, and other tools to keep our most active players engaged
- Implemented a scalable group leaderboard event system full stack. The system guarantees consistency and availability while dozens of players try to contribute progress to their group frequently
- Revamped data deploy tool to enable multiple game designers to work simultaneously
- Setup metrics tracking and funnel analysis and experimented with different UI polishes to improve retention
- Worked on upgrading our data pipeline: processing data and creating different data representations and visualizations to help ATA to make marketing and product decisions
- Revamped the realm map overview to include real time positions of ongoing marches, key locations on the map and user bookmarked pins!
- Implemented the entire stack for our Second Builder subscription purchase, which included interfacing with both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, as well as client support
- Optimized particle systems in-game to significantly reduce peak memory usage
- Developed leaderboard-assigned classes for Shrines to grant players additional perks
The application process
- Resume + screening questions review
- Two 30-minute technical interviews, back to back with our engineers - expect to write code!
- 30-minute Team Fit interview
- Offer
Benefits
- Health and dental
- Unlimited sick days, flexible scheduling and work from home options
- Our kitchen is always stocked with a wide variety of snacks and every Wednesday we provide catered lunch
- Professional development funding, regular lunch and learns, annual game jams and bi-weekly 1:1s with team leads
- Monthly “Birthiversaries”, ad-hoc game tournaments and pop-up team events. Oh, and our summer and holiday parties? They’re epic!
- On-site yoga sessions, a monthly massage clinic and our company-sponsored hockey and dodgeball teams. (Go Rampage!)
About A Thinking Ape
Mission: We build social strategy games that people play for decades.
We create mobile games with a social core that engage players and provoke us with creative new problems.
When we set out to make great games with massive online communities, we knew that we first had to create the ideal environment for building ambitious things. A place where brilliant and inspiring people could come together and build games that make millions of players happy. We realized that we needed to find incredibly talented people and get out of their way. Since then we've paid careful attention to how we like to work together. This is a brief summary of our guiding principles:
*OWNERSHIP: We take complete ownership of our work and act in the best interests of the company. We’re the type of people who care - a lot. It’s never “not my job.”
*HAVE WONDERFUL ARGUMENTS: We’re comfortable thinking deeply about important issues, and care enough to respectfully challenge decisions when we disagree. Mutual respect and checked egos allow for productive debate and better outcomes than any we would have achieved individually.
*THE BEST IDEAS WIN: We want everyone involved in problem-solving, regardless of their position. We frequently seek feedback from each other and our players in order to challenge our assumptions, and make data-driven decisions when possible.
*KEEP GROWING: We’re always building and improving on our skills and processes. We understand that when we learn, we see exponential improvement in ourselves, our products and our company. We’re never finished learning.
Together our values and mission are the driving force for why ATA exists and how we operate as a team. These cultural foundations are embedded in everything we do, especially in how we hire. We aim to hire people who share our values, believe in building communities and can add to our culture.
Top Benefits
About the role
Who you are
- We are only considering students who will be enrolled in an accredited degree program in the fall of 2025
- You are a tech generalist, a full stack engineer with the desire to work on both client and server side implementations of entire features
- Strong understanding of object-oriented design, data structures and algorithms
- You communicate your thoughts and ideas clearly in code and in writing
- You have an interest in and play mobile gaming products
What the job involves
- As a Software Development Engineer Co-op, you will be helping build our live mobile games, including but not limited to Single City, Kingdoms of Heckfire, and Party in my Dorm, as well as the tools and infrastructure needed to run these massively multiplayer online experiences
- You will work closely with artists and designers to help grow our games
- You will implement scalable, reliable, and maintainable technologies for both client and server
- You will have a major impact on the end product, and will be involved in every aspect of its development. Millions of people will use what you create
- You will be responsible for implementing features, systems, and tools for our games in live operation
- The game backends are built with a Django + MySQL server architecture, while the frontend clients are built using Unity or native iOS/Android, depending on the product
- Build entire features from front-end client code to back-end server support
- Become involved in every aspect of product development, from design to implementation to playtests to metrics analysis
- Construct systems that let everyone at the company deploy to our distributed backend without worry
- Create tools to automate and optimize processes across disciplines. These might be adding additional player management tools for our community team, data pipeline optimizations for our game designers, or even content pipelines for our art team
- Past co-ops have worked on:
- Guild management improvements like the ability to invite people, open clubs that players can join without approval, better club search, and other tools to keep our most active players engaged
- Implemented a scalable group leaderboard event system full stack. The system guarantees consistency and availability while dozens of players try to contribute progress to their group frequently
- Revamped data deploy tool to enable multiple game designers to work simultaneously
- Setup metrics tracking and funnel analysis and experimented with different UI polishes to improve retention
- Worked on upgrading our data pipeline: processing data and creating different data representations and visualizations to help ATA to make marketing and product decisions
- Revamped the realm map overview to include real time positions of ongoing marches, key locations on the map and user bookmarked pins!
- Implemented the entire stack for our Second Builder subscription purchase, which included interfacing with both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, as well as client support
- Optimized particle systems in-game to significantly reduce peak memory usage
- Developed leaderboard-assigned classes for Shrines to grant players additional perks
The application process
- Resume + screening questions review
- Two 30-minute technical interviews, back to back with our engineers - expect to write code!
- 30-minute Team Fit interview
- Offer
Benefits
- Health and dental
- Unlimited sick days, flexible scheduling and work from home options
- Our kitchen is always stocked with a wide variety of snacks and every Wednesday we provide catered lunch
- Professional development funding, regular lunch and learns, annual game jams and bi-weekly 1:1s with team leads
- Monthly “Birthiversaries”, ad-hoc game tournaments and pop-up team events. Oh, and our summer and holiday parties? They’re epic!
- On-site yoga sessions, a monthly massage clinic and our company-sponsored hockey and dodgeball teams. (Go Rampage!)
About A Thinking Ape
Mission: We build social strategy games that people play for decades.
We create mobile games with a social core that engage players and provoke us with creative new problems.
When we set out to make great games with massive online communities, we knew that we first had to create the ideal environment for building ambitious things. A place where brilliant and inspiring people could come together and build games that make millions of players happy. We realized that we needed to find incredibly talented people and get out of their way. Since then we've paid careful attention to how we like to work together. This is a brief summary of our guiding principles:
*OWNERSHIP: We take complete ownership of our work and act in the best interests of the company. We’re the type of people who care - a lot. It’s never “not my job.”
*HAVE WONDERFUL ARGUMENTS: We’re comfortable thinking deeply about important issues, and care enough to respectfully challenge decisions when we disagree. Mutual respect and checked egos allow for productive debate and better outcomes than any we would have achieved individually.
*THE BEST IDEAS WIN: We want everyone involved in problem-solving, regardless of their position. We frequently seek feedback from each other and our players in order to challenge our assumptions, and make data-driven decisions when possible.
*KEEP GROWING: We’re always building and improving on our skills and processes. We understand that when we learn, we see exponential improvement in ourselves, our products and our company. We’re never finished learning.
Together our values and mission are the driving force for why ATA exists and how we operate as a team. These cultural foundations are embedded in everything we do, especially in how we hire. We aim to hire people who share our values, believe in building communities and can add to our culture.