About the role
Role Overview
King's second largest game, Candy Crush Soda Saga, is loved by millions of players worldwide, matching Swedish fish, rescued Soda gummy bears, and popped soda bottles to win points, defeat obstacles and progress through almost 20,000 levels. This is an early-career role: you'll contribute to your team's delivery from the start, working alongside experienced engineers who will support you as you grow your craft in C++ and live game development. You will work within the Content Distribution team in the Gameplay and Monetisation Domain.
Responsibilities
- Build, test, maintain and optimise features and tooling across Content Distribution's systems.
- Manage content delivery pipelines and automated level optimisation driven by live player data.
- Develop AI-driven tooling for level generation and modification.
- Maintain broader tooling that level design relies on.
- Take ownership of well-defined tasks and follow through on them reliably, communicating progress, plans and problems as you go.
- Write high-quality, well-structured code, following team craft standards, best practices and ways of working.
- Work mainly in C++ while building essential knowledge of the wider tech stack and of the systems behind the features.
- Use AI development tools to build, debug and review code; never ship AI-generated code you cannot explain, and escalate uncertainty rather than hiding it.
- Collaborate with engineers, level designers, data scientists, product managers and QA, and follow how live issues are investigated and resolved.
- Seek out mentorship, feedback and input from colleagues, and openly share what you learn back with the team.
- Work across the game client and internal tools alongside centralised tech teams.
Key Attributes
- Passion for Programming: Genuine excitement about building experiences that millions of players enjoy and curiosity about the players and the impact of the work.
- Learning Mindset: Open to feedback and eager to learn; willing to ask for help early.
- Collaboration: Collaborative and adaptable, contributing openly in a multi-disciplinary team and helping create a supportive environment.
Experience
- Built software in a team environment (work, internship, academic projects, or personal projects).
- Written code in C++ or a comparable language, with a desire to continue developing C++ skills.
- Delivered defined pieces of work to a good standard with support and guidance from experienced colleagues.
Required Skills and Knowledge
- Understanding of essential software engineering concepts and willingness to follow software architecture principles and engineering best practices.
- Sound coding fundamentals: ability to write readable, well-structured code and apply effective testing practices with care for quality and polish.
- Ability to solve well-defined problems using established methods and to raise ambiguity early.
- Clear verbal and written communication skills to explain work, its importance, and blockers.
First Year Development Goals
- Establish a working knowledge of a large, long-lived C++ codebase and associated tooling.
- Develop comfort using AI development tools (e.g., Claude Code, Copilot) with the judgment to verify correctness before shipping.
- Develop a feel for an experimentation-driven environment where live player data and A/B test results guide development.
- Find a way around documentation at scale and contribute to it.
Working Conditions
- Team First, Hybrid Working Model: Teams across the Kingdom decide how they want to work together, utilizing a mix of in-office and home working.
- Locations: Stockholm, London, and Barcelona.
About King
King is a leading interactive entertainment company for the mobile world with more than 20 years of history. The company creates games for more than 200 million monthly active users. King is part of Microsoft and operates with a mission of Making the World Playful. Kingsters are located in Stockholm, Malmö, London, Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Malta.